Promise (19 page)

‘Can you let her know I’ve left her herbs on the table?’

Anna nodded. ‘Of course. No problem.’

Jo looked around. ‘Where’s the child?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I know you’ve had a very difficult time. Made some hard decisions.’

‘Mmm.’

The woman met Anna’s gaze. ‘But you do know that the mother–child bond is fundamental. Not something to be riven on an impulse, however noble.’

‘What?’

‘I know you rescued the girl from her stepfather abuser.’

Anna stared, a chasm of disbelief opening inside her.

Jo nodded. ‘Sabine told me.’

What the hell?

‘What a terrible situation for you. Just awful.’ Jo paused. ‘But why not take the mother too? The mother needed your support as well. Why not get them both away?’

Anna’s voice shook. ‘Because the mother
bit
her daughter and . . . and pushed her down the back steps, and let her be shoved head first down a toilet while it was being flushed.
That’s
how fundamental her sense of connection with her daughter was.’

‘How old is the mother?’

‘I don’t know.’
Young
.

‘Well, she needed rescuing from that man as much as this little one did. You left the mother at his mercy.’

Anna thought of Harlan holding a cigarette to Gabby’s skin. What else did he do to her?

‘There’s no way her mother would have come with me.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I can see why you did what you did,’ said Jo. She sighed. ‘It’s just that you’ve ruptured the girl’s fundamental relationship. It’s not something to take lightly.’

Anna tried to temper the bite in her voice. ‘Her mother ruptured it, not me.’

She needed to sit down, to catch her breath.
Could this woman turn me in? In the interest of reuniting Charlie with her mother? Holy hell, why did Sabine tell her?

The midwife grimaced and looked into the distance over Anna’s shoulder. ‘I just . . . my whole life’s work is the mother–child bond.’

Anna tried keep her voice calm. ‘I did what I could to help the most vulnerable person in this situation.’

Jo nodded and sighed. ‘Do you have children?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Do you want them?’

‘What?’

‘I ask most people that.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Professional prerogative. Or habit. Sorry.’ She slid her hands into the pockets of her pants. ‘Where’s the girl? Is she with Sabine?’

‘She’s asleep.’ Anna kept her eyes on the woman. If Anna glanced over to the bails, this woman could well march over to have a look at Charlie. ‘You know, just because you give birth to a child doesn’t mean you are the best person to take care of them.’

Jo sighed and waggled her head. ‘Mmm. But there’s not a policy of trying to keep children with their parents for some abstract reason, you know. It’s because giving birth to a child
means
something. Children want their parents.’

Anna was silent.
Sometimes we want something that’s not best for us
.

‘The girl must ask for her mother . . .?’ said Jo.

‘A few times.’

Where’s my mummy?

Anna took a breath. ‘So, now you know the situation, are you willing to keep it to yourself? Just for another few weeks. Please.’ Her voice cracked. ‘If you’d seen the bite on her leg or . . . heard her screaming . . . you would have wanted to take her away too . . . They would have ended up killing her, I really believe that.’

‘I won’t tell anyone.’ Her gaze was steady but Anna couldn’t read her expression.

‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘Sorry if I came on a bit strong, but I just felt so . . . dismayed to hear that you left the mother there.’ She frowned. ‘In my work I see more mothers who need rescuing than you can imagine.’

She glanced over to the house. ‘Anyway, tell Sabine I’ll see her next week. And tell her to keep up with that tea I gave her yesterday. It tastes awful but she needs it.’ She climbed into her car and lifted a hand in farewell.

Anna watched her drive away, then stood for a few moments, her eyes closed.
What the hell was Sabine thinking?

•

She didn’t bother with the cup of tea, she just climbed back into bed beside Charlie. The girl had rolled onto her back and thrown off the sheet. Her t-shirt was twisted to one side, and in the bright light, Anna saw a shiny round scar on Charlie’s tummy.

Anna pulled the t-shirt down and lay beside the girl. Anna was so close she could see each biscuit-coloured freckle on the girl’s nose, and each curved hair in her eyebrows. Anna had never lain watching a sleeping child before, had never felt this murky upheaval of fear and tenderness and guilt.

T
he fallen tree stretched from one side of the forest clearing to the other. Anna followed Charlie as the girl picked her way over the twigs and branches, pausing now and then to look at the felled trunk. Anna guessed it was at least forty metres long. It had brought down a couple of other, smaller, trees, and all around lay shattered branches, some of them sprouting leaves that wilted in the heat. Charlie reached the big stump, which was almost two metres across, and touched a finger to the amber sap oozing from the bark line.

Anna had woken for the second time that morning to the sound of Pat pulling up in his ute. She’d roused Charlie, and after Pat collected chainsaw oil from the shed, he drove them up the hill. Anna was glad to get away from the house; she kept picturing the midwife heading straight to the police. It might all come to an end today.

‘Give the stump a sniff.’ Pat approached Charlie, a dented metal water bottle in one hand. The air was filled with the tang of cut wood.

Charlie bent and touched her nose to the freshly cut wood. She held her face there for a long moment and it occurred to Anna that the girl was touching a part of the tree that had, until an hour or so ago, been completely hidden away and protected.

Anna laid a hand on the sun-warmed wood and wondered if the sap had stopped flowing yet. A dead human body was utterly vacated – even half an hour after Anna’s grandpa died, his body seemed empty, the cells hollowed out – but this wood still felt alive under Anna’s hand. She thought of the red cedar chest in her dad’s bedroom and how that wood, from a tree chopped down a hundred or more years ago, still, somehow, held life.

Pat smoothed a hand over the flat of the stump and said to Charlie, ‘I planted this long before you were born. It was a tiny seedling. And when I planted it, I imagined the day I’d cut it down.’ He smiled. ‘But I had no idea you’d be here. You weren’t even born yet.’

Charlie rubbed the tip of her nose and looked around. ‘Did you plant all these trees?’

He nodded. ‘Most of them.’

‘They look like people.’

He considered the trees that ringed the clearing and smiled. ‘They’d be very still people. Very still.’

Anna thought that maybe Charlie would prefer her people rooted in place.

Pat pointed to a smaller tree that lay on the ground. ‘The big tree took out a few others on the way down. It had a mind of its own.’

‘What will you do with the tree?’ asked Charlie.

‘I’ll cut it up into pieces and then when it’s dry, one thing I’ll do is make a bed for the baby, for when it’s older.’

‘Is your baby a girl or a boy?’ Charlie stepped around the stump and touched the brown bark.

‘I don’t know.’

‘A boy is better,’ she said.

‘Is that right?’

Charlie nodded and tried to peel off some bark, but it stuck tight to the tree.

She used a branch to climb up onto the trunk and balance there, arms outstretched, then trod carefully along the trunk, as if it were a tightrope, her feet at Anna’s shoulder height.

‘Charlie, I think you should hop down,’ said Anna. ‘I don’t want you to fall, not with your sore arm.’

‘I’m okay.’ She lowered herself to straddle the branch, pink sneakers dangling. ‘It doesn’t hurt anymore.’

Anna turned back to Pat and spoke quietly. ‘Jo the midwife turned up a couple of hours ago.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Pat kept his eyes on Charlie.

‘She . . . remonstrated with me for not also taking Charlie’s mother. For leaving the mother behind. Sabine
told her
about me and Charlie.’ Her indignation rose anew.
What the hell was Sabine thinking?

Pat stared at her. ‘Jo said that? That
Sabine
told her?’

So Pat didn’t know.

‘Yes, that’s what she said.’

What if Anna and Charlie had to move on now, because Jo knew? Perhaps that was why Sabine did it. Or was Anna just getting paranoid?

Pat looked away into the forest and shook his head. ‘Why the hell did she do that? Shit! I don’t get it.’ He blew out a long breath. ‘You can trust Jo, though. She’s solid.’

‘Are you so sure? She clearly thinks I’ve done a terrible thing.’ There was no breeze up there in the forest and waves of heat pressed against her until she felt breathless and light-headed.

Charlie shuffled away from them along the branch, one leg on each side of the trunk.

‘Jo’s trustworthy,’ said Pat.

‘But who else is Sabine going to tell? A few neighbours?’ Her voice rose. ‘Other
trustworthy
people? Women at . . . oh, I don’t know . . . her pre-natal yoga class? What the hell is she thinking?’

She had to rein herself in; she couldn’t afford to alienate Pat. She needed him. ‘When Charlie goes back, I want the handover to be controlled, for her sake. This Jo woman could be telling someone right now and I couldn’t bear for the cops to turn up and just drag her away.’

She glanced over to where Charlie was shaking a branch, the leaves rattling. How on earth was she going to prepare Charlie for the handover? What could she say?
I’m going to give you to some strangers, who will give you to even more strangers
.
You’re probably not going back to your mum. Goodbye.

‘Yeah. I get that, Anna.’ His voice was curt. ‘As you know, we don’t want the cops turning up either. I have
no idea
why Sabine would have told Jo. She was pretty . . . ah . . . shaky yesterday.’

‘RALPH!’ shouted Charlie as the kelpie trotted into the clearing. She slid to the ground, grinning.

The dog reached the girl, tail wagging furiously.

‘Sit, Ralph!’

Ralph sat, her wet fur sticking out in dark brown points. The girl bent to the dog, her beaming face close to the kelpie’s snout. ‘Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie.’

‘Not so close to the dog’s face, Charlie,’ said Anna.

‘She’ll be right,’ muttered Pat.

Charlie patted Ralph’s wet back, and whispered something near the dog’s ear.

Michael appeared from the forest, carrying a towel which he laid on the bonnet of the ute. He waved to them, then pulled long metal poles from the back of the ute and stacked them on the ground.

Pat took a swig from his water bottle. ‘We’re going to clean up the tree and set up to do some milling now. Best if you two stay well out of the way.’ He pointed to the edge of the clearing. ‘Over there, near the esky.’ He didn’t make eye contact with Anna.

‘Okay.’

He kicked at a branch near his foot. ‘I’ve been thinking about somewhere else for you to stay for a little while. There’s a place, an empty cabin I have in mind. Then we can tell Jo that you’ve moved on.’

‘So, you don’t trust Jo?’

His eyes flicked over to her. ‘We may as well cover all bases.’

‘Sure. Where’s this cabin?’

‘About half an hour’s walk from my place. Up towards the top of the mountain. I just need to make a phone call to the guy who owns it . . .’

Was he imagining that they’d stay in this cabin only until the week was up? Or was it possible that they could stay longer now, if Pat was going to tell people that they’d gone? Anna couldn’t bear the thought of handing Charlie over to the police in five days’ time. What if she was taken straight back to Gabby and Harlan?

‘And let me talk to Sabine about the Jo business,’ said Pat. ‘It’s best if you don’t raise it.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’d better get back to it.’ Pat walked to the ute.

Anna shouldn’t have let her anger at Sabine leak out. She’d pissed him off. Pat, who had taken them in, who was their lifeline.

‘Come on, Charlie, let’s go sit at the esky.’

Charlie slapped a hand to her thigh. ‘Come, Ralph!’ The dog trotted obediently beside the girl. Charlie sprawled on the ground under the tree and the dog flopped over her legs.

Anna sat on the esky and wondered if Pat had forgotten about taking her to town in the afternoon to phone her dad. He and Michael seemed to be settling in to mill the tree. She so wanted to hear her dad’s voice, and hoped he’d help her come up with a plan to hand Charlie back. He knew how the police worked.

Charlie gently touched the tip of one of Ralph’s pointy ears. ‘She’s got hair inside her ears!’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘You and I have hair in our ears, too. Just not as much.’

Michael wandered over and nodded at Anna. ‘And how are you going, young Charlie?’

Charlie’s fingers were buried in the fur on the dog’s back. ‘Can Ralph come with me one day?’

‘One day. For a visit.’ Michael picked up a stainless steel thermos from the ground and poured something hot into the lid.

‘Want some tea?’ He offered it to Anna. He was missing the tip of his middle finger.

‘No, thanks.’

Michael squatted and drank the tea, running his eyes over the fallen tree. His wet ponytail had soaked his work shirt.

‘Ralph is very discerning, you know.’ He smiled at Anna. ‘It might look to you like she’ll turn it on for anyone who comes along, but some people she just won’t have anything to do with. She’s quite indifferent to the attentions of Avril’s girls. But Ralph likes your girl.’

Charlie watched Michael, a shy smile on her lips.

‘She’s a very particular dog, our Ralph,’ said Michael. He tossed the last of his tea away and stood up. ‘Stay with Charlie, Ralph.’

‘I’ll look after her.’ Charlie gazed up at Michael, her eyes bright. She watched him cross to the ute, and returned to stroking Ralph’s damp fur.

T
he late afternoon light slanted over the paddocks, turning the grass a saturated green. Charlie sat between Pat and Anna on the front seat of the ute, and leant forward to look as they passed a young woman standing beside the road, her thumb out. They were down on the plain, only a few minutes from Mullumbimby. Sabine had driven up just before they left, buckets and mops on the back seat of her little car.