Posse (14 page)

‘Mum, stop it!'

‘Well, off you go, get your clothes on.' She looks past me into the house. ‘Your father's not here, is he?'

‘No. And I'm not coming with you.' I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘I live here now.'

Mum's face crumples and she cries helplessly.

‘Mum …'

‘You really …' she sobs, ‘you really would be well advised … I can make an application in the Family Court …'

‘Dad and Lizzie have asked me to stay here. That's what I want and that's what I'm going to do. I'm sixteen.'

Pulling a bunch of tissues from her sleeve, Mum wipes her eyes, blows her nose and tries to compose herself. Then she puts the tissues back up her sleeve. She takes a deep breath.

‘You haven't been happy at home. I know that. I've been thinking of ways we could make it better for you. I thought we could turn the garden studio into a teenager's retreat … and that we could take you to the hairdresser near the station to get some – what do you call them – some streaks. And I know I'm not at home enough and I should take more holidays. There's a conference coming up in Fiji. Everyone says it's got a great recreational program …'

‘Mum, will you listen to me? Dad and Lizzie want me here.'

‘To get their revenge on me!'

‘Thanks. I thought they wanted to get to know
me
.'

I take a step back from her. She takes a step forward.

‘I am the only person committed to looking after you …'

‘Please stop. Please get back in the car.'

I can't help but think of the time Nanna went to Tom's mistress's house to pick him up. He had a chance at a new, freer life and he threw it away to ease his guilt. It's not quite the same choice here, but as I look out the door to Nanna's car and see Nanna in the driver's seat and Tom in the back like an invalid child, my resolution becomes rock-solid.

I feel sorry for Mum. I find her attempts to turn me against staying here feeble. I know she needs me and that she'll be worse off without me. But
I'm not going with her. I've had enough of her poison and self-deceit.

If Dad and Lizzie don't care about me, I'll know soon enough. I have to give things here a chance.

‘There are so many things I want to tell you, Amy,' Mum goes on, gripping my upper arms. ‘So many things I should have told you, but didn't.'

‘Like what?'

‘That I love you and I can't imagine life without you. That I'm proud of you. There are other things too. I always wanted a family with two parents and two children. I didn't want you to have a broken home, but I thought you were better off away from your father. Since you were born, everything I've done – every decision I've made – has been with a view to improving your life. I've always done what I thought was good for you.'

‘I don't think you always know what's good for me,' I say. ‘I've been miserable at home for the last two years. I need a break. Nanna's a bloody lunatic.'

‘You've got to understand her life …'

‘I don't want to waste my life trying to understand hers. Mum, I'm sorry, but you have to go. I'm not coming with you. I'll call you on the weekend about my stuff. Say hi to Tom for me.'

She turns away with her face in her hands and shudders, crying hard. I shut the front door and watch her trudge back to the car through the lounge room window. How could I have been under her spell for so long?

The car stays parked for a good ten minutes while Mum and Nanna argue heatedly in the front seat. Eventually Mum folds her arms and stares out the window and Nanna starts the car. Tom slouches in the back looking catatonic. What a trio. And what a good time to make my escape.

Collapsing onto the lounge, I marvel at how well I handled Mum. I'm surprised she didn't put up a bigger fight. Maybe she thinks that I'll come howling back next week with my tail between my legs. She probably thinks that I can't manage
without her. It's possible that she genuinely believes that Dad doesn't loves me, and that Lizzie would prefer it if I didn't exist. I suppose believing those things helps her cope with the choices she's made, with her strange situation. Let her believe them. I've got my own opinion.

I
T'S WINTER NOW AND THE
days are cold and short. The last few mornings I've lain in bed, longing for some blistering heat and wishing it was February again.

These days I really notice the weather. I have to get up early to catch the train to school. No more lazy starts or warm car trips direct to the front gate. Lizzie drives me to Pennant Hills Station at about seven on her way to work. Platform 2, where I wait for the city train, must record some of the lowest
temperatures in the country. It takes me hours to thaw out.

It's been almost six months since the camp at the Riveroak Recreation Ranch. Like the heat of last summer, like the old-person smell in Nanna's house, it's hard to imagine being in the thick of it. The jumble of clothes on the floor of our hut, the mosquitoes in the mess hall, the wobbly, sunburned bodies in the dam, the devon on devon on stale white bread – they're faded photographs now. Only one image is sharp and clear – the inside of Bevan's living quarters, which I've described about a million times to the police. The position of his bed and his Bible, of my body over his body, I know by heart. But it's not a moving picture any more, just a pencil drawing annexed to my record of interview at the Crown Prosecutor's office.

Bevan's been charged with having sexual intercourse with a child under his special care. He's on bail now, and the trial, which I'm dreading, is in September. Bevan's pleading not guilty and he's
declined to give a statement to police. That means I'll have no idea what his story is until the day of the hearing. Lizzie's told me to expect lawyers' lies and muckraking, but she says the jury will probably believe me because I went straight to my friends and told them about it. Too bad for Bevan I'm such a bragger. According to Lizzie, he could go to jail for eight years.

The Crown Prosecutor has interviewed Johanna. Apparently Jo's story got vaguer each time she told it, so he decided not to call her as a witness. She could really bolster our case by admitting she'd seen Clare's white singlet, but she won't. I know she saw it and I'm pretty sure she took it, but there's no proof. Jo's a weak person – really dangerous too. At the time she ratted on us, she thought Clare had been raped and she was prepared to help the rapist get away if it meant saving herself. It could have ruined Clare's life – my life too if I'd been branded a liar and expelled. I'm not saying we should have made a federal case
of it, but once the story was out, she should have told the truth.

I still feel guilty about Bevan and what might happen to him. I feel like I held myself out as a woman when I was always only a girl. I accept what everyone says – that he was meant to be looking after me, that he's a perverted creep and I shouldn't feel sorry for him. But I can't shake the knowledge that if Clare and I hadn't been at each other's throats, none of it would have happened.

On the other hand, if it hadn't happened, I know I'd be worse off. I'd be behind bars at Nanna's house, detesting Dad, believing that Johanna was one of my best friends, taking endless crap from Clare, pushing Marina deeper and deeper into a dicey romance.

If it hadn't happened, Bevan might be getting his rocks off with some other girl, someone younger and less robust than I am. At least now he'll think twice before he reaches for underage flesh. Even if he's acquitted, he won't soon forget
about the bleach-blonde lesbian hockey player he wooed outside the mess hall. His career in the Uniting Church is probably over. He's being investigated by the Synod Committee for Discipline, which will make a decision at the conclusion of the criminal trial. Even if he's acquitted in the criminal proceedings, he may never be able to work as a pastor.

No one is forgetting about what Bevan's done. And no one's trying to sweep it under the carpet. Not even our beloved headmistress.

A souped-up version of the incident was splashed across the front page of
The Sydney Morning Herald
the day after Dad took me to the police. No names were mentioned, except Mrs Sproule, who was reported as saying that ‘the girls involved will be offered counselling and support over the coming days and weeks. The whole school family is devastated by these events.'

The same day, Sproule summoned Mum, Dad, Lizzie and me to her office, and, without apolo
gising or even acknowledging that she'd intended to expel me, sincerely begged me to stay.

‘Amy's a very prominent member of the school community,' she said, leaning towards me over her enormous mahogany desk. ‘We'd hate to lose her over this awful affair. I know Miss Howell thinks she's going to represent Australia in hockey one day.'

I wanted to puke, but I agreed to stay. It was worth it just to see Mum, Dad and Lizzie sitting peacefully together in the same room. Afterwards, they even had a civilised conversation and agreed that I needed a maths tutor. It was completely unprecedented.

After the camp, what I really needed was a good break from Mum, and I got that without any trouble from her. No urgent applications in the Family Court. No scenes in Dad's driveway. After the meeting in the headmistress's office, Mum and I didn't see each other for more than a month. It gave me a good chance to settle in with Dad and
Lizzie. And it made me miss Mum – another unprecedented event.

Now Mum and I have a couple of ‘appointments' throughout the week. On Wednesday afternoons we go swimming together at the aquatic centre – I go down the slides and she does laps – and on Saturdays she drives me to my hockey matches. After hockey we usually go back to Nanna's house for lunch and sit by while Nanna gets stuck into Tom for terrible crimes such as leaving the flyscreens open. The antics at Nanna's house are much more amusing now that I don't have to live with them full-time. Mum and I even exchange little smirks, which would never have happened in the old days. It's as though the fact that I've wriggled out of her grip has helped her loosen Nanna's. I'll eat my hat if they ever live under different roofs, though. Mum's just too far gone. Nanna will always have control in most areas of her life.

And there's another person who's minding her
manners around me – Clare McSpedden. She's actually
nice
to me now. Not occasionally, not just when she wants something, but all the time. Where the teachers are concerned she's still an arrogant brat, but she seems to have stopped taking me for granted.

As witnesses in an upcoming trial, Clare and I aren't allowed to discuss the details of what happened with Bevan, which is a relief. I think we're both embarrassed about it and would prefer to leave the finer points alone anyway. Since the camp, we seem to be kinder to each other, and less familiar. It's as if we've reached a silent agreement not to prod each other's sensitive points, now that we've seen what prodding can lead to.

Though she hasn't admitted it, Clare is delighted that Marina and I are no longer an item. It's part of the reason she's sweetened. The competition's fallen away.

By the time I returned to school the week after the camp, Marina had already caught a whiff of my
dalliance with Bevan. Anyone could have told her. Everyone knew. I, however, suspect Jo. Johanna hasn't spoken with any other member of our posse since she left camp with Reverend Harris that day. She's never apologised, or explained why she bailed on us. We've heard it through one of her friends from Bible study that she never said Clare and I were lying about Bevan. She just thought we were being childish and wanted nothing to do with the trouble we were causing. I don't believe that for a moment and Jo knows it. She's dropped out of the hockey team and every other social scenario that involves me. I wouldn't be surprised if she changes schools at the end of the year. And I wouldn't care.

Anyway, regardless of who leaked the information about Bevan, Marina had at least a vague idea that I'd been unfaithful, and the break-up, which took more than a week to finalise, was terrible. For days I cried in the afternoon until dinnertime. Dad and Lizzie thought I was going mental.

It started with Marina dodging me like I was carrying the Ebola virus. She was always huddled in the middle of her Year Nine posse, talking and laughing overzealously, and very obviously ignoring me. I tried calling her at home, but she'd invariably be in the bath or in bed. Once when her mother handed her the phone handset, she left it in a room and shut the door. I called out in vain for about half an hour.

Eventually I cornered her in the library during a study period. She was reading Daphne du Maurier's
The Birds
, and reading it very intently indeed when she noticed me approaching. I sat down next to her, thinking how intensely and tragically beautiful she was.

‘I love you,' I said. It probably wasn't the right way to begin. Her response knocked me for six.

‘I'm seeing someone,' she said, without looking at me. ‘A boy I met in Port Macquarie at Christmas.'

I pretended to be at ease with this news and she imparted some further details, that he was sixteen
and a son of some family friends. That night I cried so hard that I vomited.

The next day she was all over me, as though nothing had happened. She held my hand during recess and we shared a caramel slice. At lunchtime we went behind the science block and sucked each other's faces for half an hour. I felt guilty and vowed to end it the day after, but Marina took the day off.

The next school day, which was a Monday, Marina was ignoring me again, so I confronted her at lunchtime in the middle of the quad.

‘You're acting like a baby,' I told her. ‘If you have something to say to me, for God's sake, just say it.'

‘You had it off with some bloke,' she whispered tearfully.

‘You know I can't talk about that.'

‘How convenient.' She folded her arms and smiled cruelly. ‘There's no boy from Port Macquarie, by the way. I just don't want to see you any more. I don't want to
be
seen with you.'

‘Okay, I understand. I think it'd be a good idea if we cooled it for a while. I still really like you, but …'

She stormed off while I was in mid-sentence and was nowhere to be found for the rest of the day.

A few days later she came up to me and apologised and said she wanted to be friends. We've spoken a few times since then, but mostly if we pass each other we nod hello or don't even acknowledge each other. Lately she's been walking arm-in-arm with a pretty little dark-haired gymnast called Sian L'Estrange. I'm quite cut-up about it actually, though I'm not exactly sure which one I resent. At one point I was feeling so jealous I considered starting something with Clare, just to make myself feel better. I only had to think about that for five seconds to realise it'd be a disaster.

Right now I'm trying to think more about schoolwork and less about schoolgirls. The half-yearly exams start in a few weeks, and I'm planning
to blitz English and History, and at least pass Maths. My English teacher, Mrs James, says I'll collect the English prize this year if I maintain my current average.

I've never won an academic prize before. I'm thrilled at the thought of that kind of recognition and I keep fantasising about speech night and walking onto the stage to receive my prize. I imagine Mum and Dad sitting together in the audience, applauding, proud of me, happy with the way I'm turning out.

That's a dream I've held secretly for a while. Now it's actually within my reach.