Promise (32 page)

A
nna’s dad flung up the roller door and turned back to her. ‘I should have kept up the rent on your place. Sorry, love.’

‘I’m not sure I could have gone back there anyway, Dad.’

Anna stepped into the storage locker stacked with her things. Her old blue couch. The television. Cardboard boxes piled to waist height. While she and Charlie were up in the forest, her dad had packed up all her stuff and trucked it over the mountains to one of his own storage lockers in Orange. She didn’t want to ask, but presumed he left all the pot plants behind.

She ran a finger over a box her dad had neatly taped up.
Kitchenware.

‘Thank you so much for doing this, Daddo. It must have been a huge job.’

She started crying again and he stepped close and hugged her. ‘Oh, Annie.’

She sobbed into his shoulder. ‘I just want to know that she’s okay.’

He patted her back. ‘I know. At least she’s not with her mother and the boyfriend.’

She stepped away and wiped her face. ‘God knows what the grandmother’s like, though.’

‘It’s out of your hands now.’ He surveyed the storage shed. ‘I have your computer at home. And your toiletries. I didn’t think they’d survive the heat very well. Most of your clothes are in those two suitcases.’

She unzipped the green suitcase and rummaged through neatly rolled clothes to find a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. They smelt of her house, of her old life. She thought of the clothes Sabine had given her, sitting folded on the shelf at the cottage, beside Charlie’s small t-shirts and shorts, and favourite purple dress. She hoped that one of the cops had gone to get them, and the dolls, and Bunny, who would have been somewhere in the mess of bedclothes.

‘I’m just going to put some clean clothes on,’ she said as she found a bundle of underpants in the suitcase.

‘There’s a bathroom in the office . . .’ He pointed towards the boom gate.

‘It’s okay.’

She was so weary, she couldn’t be bothered with modesty. Her dad busied himself at the car while she undressed and pulled on her old burgundy shorts and a tank top. The shorts were loose and sat low on her hips. She’d lost weight. She slid down the roller door and wheeled the suitcase to the back of her dad’s car. Whatever clothes were in that case would do for now.

‘Good.’ Her dad heaved her suitcase into the boot. ‘You look like yourself again.’

She smiled. ‘You’ve always been a crap liar.’

‘We’ll be home in ten minutes.’

•

She’d spent a day at the Byron Bay police station. First, the detectives had questioned her, and made her recount, in detail, how she took Charlie. Karen, who seemed to be the senior detective, was more friendly than Anna expected.

Then she was put in a cell, where she sat on the plastic mattress and stared at her bare, muddy feet, her mind circling the same questions: where was Charlie right now? Was she okay? Would Anna get bail? When would her dad arrive? Who had dobbed them in?

After the magistrate granted her bail, her dad – who’d flown from Orange to the Gold Coast – bundled her into his hire car.

‘Let’s head over to Lismore, Annie,’ he said. ‘Hotels around here will be too pricey.’

She phoned Dave and left him a message then pretended to sleep while her dad drove. Through half-closed eyes she watched the scenery whipping by, her mind whirring so quickly she could barely pick out individual thoughts. Anna hadn’t felt this miserable since the days after her mother’s death when, day after day, she’d come home from school to an empty house.

All she wanted was to know that Charlie was okay. No, she wanted to hold Charlie. She’d always imagined the great love of her life would be a man, not a five-year-old girl she’d known for three months.

Dave phoned back while she was under the shower in the Lismore motel. Her dad knocked on the bathroom door and passed his phone through. She sat naked and wet on the lid of the toilet.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Anna. How are you?’

Oh, it was lovely to hear his voice.

‘I don’t know how I am,’ she said. ‘Exhausted, I guess . . . all I can think about is Charlie.’ The shower dripped into the bath beside her. ‘I suppose she’s with the grandmother.’

‘I guess so, unless they decide the grandmother’s not fit to care for her.’

‘So someone will look into that?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I’d hope so.’

There was the sound of a woman laughing somewhere at his end. He must be at work.

‘Any idea how the police found you?’ asked Dave.

‘No.’ She hadn’t mustered the courage to ask her dad if it was him. ‘We took Charlie to hospital for a virus and maybe the doctor figured it out. I don’t know.’

‘I guess it doesn’t particularly matter now, does it?’ he said. ‘How are you,
really
? I can only imagine the arrest was pretty awful.’

She ran a toe through the muddy footprint she’d left on the white floor tiles. ‘The worst was watching them drive away with Charlie . . .’

‘Your dad said you have to live with him.’

‘Yeah. And I’m not allowed to see Charlie, of course . . .’ She sighed. ‘If I even knew where she was.’

Through the small, high window came the sound of someone walking along the motel verandah, whistling a jaunty tune.

‘Your lawyer did well to get you bail. And listen, I’ll help you find someone good for the sentencing. You’re pleading guilty, your dad said.’

‘Yeah. Well, I am. Guilty, that is.’

‘It’s a good plan. And I have a couple of ideas for defence lawyers.’

‘Ta.’

‘You know, Anna, the FACS people will take good care of Charlie. That’s what they do, take care of kids.’

She smiled. ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’

There was silence from his end.

‘How are your kids?’ Her voice sounded even flatter than she felt.

‘They’re good. First term of high school, which is all a bit exciting.’

In the motel room, her dad turned the TV on. It blared until he turned it down.

Dave said, ‘Look, I really want to see you but I can’t get out to your dad’s for at least a fortnight. I’m up to my eyeballs in work. Can you come to Sydney for a quick visit?’

‘I’m meant to sleep at Dad’s every night. I don’t have a place in Sydney anymore. Dad packed up my place.’

‘Yeah, I know. I helped him.’

‘Oh, did you? Thank you.’ She pictured him stacking her possessions into boxes. He knew her better now than he had before, that was certain.

‘I took all your pot plants to my place,’ he said. ‘They’re down the back near the clothesline.’

‘Oh thanks, Dave.’ She started crying. ‘Thank you.’

•

Anna and her dad sat up on the twin double beds, facing the television. He paged through the room-service menu.

‘Hamburger and chips. Steak and chips. They have spaghetti bolognese. Or we could order Chinese in.’

‘Hamburger and chips is perfect, thanks, Dad.’

He picked up the phone and ordered.

‘Thank you kindly, young lady,’ he said, then hung up. He’d always had an ultra-polite phone manner.

He plumped the pillow behind his back and picked up the remote. ‘What do you want to watch?’ The news was on mute, showing footage of a capsized boat somewhere.

‘Thanks for coming, Dad. I’m sorry to drag you into this.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Sorry to besmirch your reputation.’

‘You didn’t drag me into it. I’m your dad. You were part of my deal the moment you were born.’

‘Well, thank you.’ She watched the silent pictures of two men in life jackets being helped up a jetty. ‘Life dealt Charlie such a crappy hand but she was still so game, you know, so unapologetically herself.’

‘You were like that.’

She shook her head. ‘My hand wasn’t half as crappy as hers. And I didn’t feel that game or plucky either.’ She was too tired and raw to stop herself from saying more. ‘After Mum died, I was always testing the waters, always holding back. Charlie doesn’t hold back.’

She felt breathless, mentioning her mother, and couldn’t look at him.

‘Maybe she knew she didn’t have to hold back with you,’ he said.

Like I had to hold back with you
, she wanted to say.

‘She still wanted her mother.’ She glanced at him.

He smiled. ‘Of course. We all want our mother. Especially when she’s gone.’

His mother was a farmer’s wife, a no-nonsense, devout Christian. She died of a stroke the year before Anna’s mum died.

‘You still miss your mum?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Yeah. I still miss my mum.’ The TV pictures went blurry.

‘I emailed Luke and let him know what was happening.’

‘You just can’t talk about her, can you?’

‘About your mum?’

She nodded.

He shook his head. ‘But what is there to say, Annie?’ He patted his chest. ‘It’s all in here, really.’

‘Maybe
you
didn’t need to talk about her, but I did.’

‘Well, you could have.’

‘No, I couldn’t! You told me to stop asking about her.’ She ran her hands down her face. She’d start shouting if she didn’t calm down.

‘I asked you to stop?’ He sounded genuinely puzzled.

‘In the garage.’ She turned to face him. ‘You threw the shelf onto the floor and stormed off for hours.’

‘Stormed off? I don’t remember that.’

‘You don’t remember that?’ She swallowed. ‘Dad, you acted as if she’d never existed. I felt like I was going mad.’ She started to weep. ‘There was no one to talk to about her, and remember how it was, and so the few memories I had . . . when they faded, that was it. I had nothing. I was just left with this big black hole where my mum used to be.’

He took a long drink from his can of beer. ‘It
was
a big black hole. That’s the truth of it.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘Couldn’t you talk to Lorraine?’

‘I wanted
us three
to talk about her.
We
were the three left behind.’

‘I’m really sorry, Annie. I did my best.’ He stood up. ‘Do you want another beer?’

‘No.’ She wiped her cheeks with the sheet and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

Sorry wasn’t enough. It was the same as it ever was.

She heard him open the bar fridge. ‘I’ll call Luke and let him know you’re okay.’

‘Ah, it’s alright. I’ll send him an email.’

He flicked open the tab on the can of beer. ‘Our top priority now is to find you a gun lawyer, my girl.’

‘I know. Dave will help.’ She took a breath. ‘You’re not the one, are you, who told the cops where we were hiding?’

He stared at her and sighed. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘To be honest, I did contemplate it a couple of times. But, no. It wasn’t me. I was very bloody glad to get your phone call from the police station, though.’

Someone knocked on the door. ‘Room service!’

Anna ducked into the bathroom while her dad opened the door. She couldn’t face strangers right now. She stood before the mirror and peered at her face, listening to him chatting to the room-service guy about the cricket. She believed he didn’t dob her in. It must have been the doctor.

‘Anna! Come and get your hamburger!’

She tucked her hair behind her ears. Her dad hadn’t mentioned her short hair. She wanted to ask him whether it made her look as much like her mother as she imagined.

T
hey reached her dad’s place in the late afternoon. As soon as Anna finished high school and left home, he’d moved out of the weatherboard house in town and bought a brown double-brick box in a new development on the outskirts of Orange.

He pulled her suitcase from the boot of the hire car. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s settle you in.’

She stood on his front porch as he unlocked the front door. His lawn was neatly mown and featured a rose bush in a circular brick bed. The houses in his suburb still seemed bland and featureless to Anna, even twenty years on, even after the trees had grown.

He wheeled her suitcase into the spare room. Together they made up the double bed with the green chenille bedspread that her dad used to have on his bed. He folded the corner of the sheet down as if it were a hotel.

‘There you go, love. I’ll go make us a cuppa. Then I’ll drop the car at the airport and pick up the pup from Lorraine.’

‘Thanks, Dad. What’s the puppy’s name?’

He smiled sheepishly. ‘Pup.’

She laughed. ‘I won’t forget that. Can I use your phone, please?’

He turned back from the doorway and cupped her cheeks gently in his papery hands. ‘You use anything you want, sweetie. This is your home. There’s no need to ask.’

‘Thank you.’

She took the phone out to the back garden and stood in the shadow cast by the house. The air on this side of the Dividing Range was so dry, and carried a desiccating heat, even at the start of March. Her dad’s long rectangle of lawn was hemmed in by a high metal fence. A small clothesline was bolted to the side of the house and in the middle of the yard was a lemon tree weighed down with unripe fruit.

Dave answered his phone straightaway. ‘Anna?’

‘Hi. I’m at Dad’s. I’m wondering . . . can you find out where Charlie is?’

He cleared his throat and she heard him walking. ‘No. I can’t. And I can’t talk about the case. I’ll very likely be called as a witness at your sentencing.’

‘The solicitor in Byron says that even though I got bail, there’s still a chance I may go to jail. Is that your assessment? I know you know this stuff. Will I go to jail?’

She waited for his reassurance, for things to fall back into place.

‘Well,’ he paused, ‘I haven’t prosecuted any child abductions . . . But, in theory, yes, you might go to jail.’

‘But that’s crazy. I was protecting her.’ She looked over at the low hills in the distance. They were a muted green, as if the colour had been leached away.

‘The law views it differently, Anna.’

‘But Charlie was in trouble. Serious trouble. And they turned a blind eye like we all do when someone’s in trouble. We do. We don’t want to get involved.’ She knew she was jabbering. ‘We leave it to the . . . the friggin’ authorities. But we should all be responsible for the kids around us. All of us.’