Callie stumbles over the uneven pavement. She almost goes down but is rescued by Mia who laughs hysterically as she holds her friend up. ‘We are so drunk,’ she announces to the silent neighbourhood.
‘Shush,’ whispers Callie, holding her finger to her lips as she steadies herself against Mia.
‘Who’s going to hear us?’ laughs Mia.
‘The ghosts,’ says Callie flailing her arms around. ‘Whoo, whoo, Mia, the ghosts of drunks past are coming to get you.’
Mia runs her finger across her lips and smiles. Both girls stand still for a moment, each swaying a little. ‘I love Hallowe’en parties,’ says Mia.
‘Me too, and you look so cute.’
Mia looks down at her tight black leggings and matching black top. ‘I had wings,’ she says. She tips to the side and then plants her feet firmly apart to stop herself from falling. She looks at Callie. ‘And you had cat ears and a tail. Where’ve they gone?’
‘Hmm,’ answers Callie. ‘We lost them. Never mind. Let’s just get back to my place so we can sleep or throw up or something. Thank God my parents are away. Dad hates it when I come home pissed.’ She shivers in the early morning air. It’s the end of October and the Australian summer is only a month away, but the nights are still chilly.
‘You’re twenty years old, Callie, your dad has no right to… oh shit, I feel so sick, but I also want a burger. Let’s go and get a burger.’
‘No, Mia, we have to go home. Why do you always make the Uber drop us so far away from where we need to be?’
‘My mum told me to do that. In case he’s a rapist or something.’
‘Your mum thinks everyone is a criminal and I thought you hated her because she’s neurotic and crazy.’
‘I don’t… I don’t hate her, she’s my mum and sometimes I think…’ Mia gazes up into the night sky.
‘You think?’ prompts Callie.
‘I think she could be right. I love my mum so much. I love my mum and my dad and I love you too, Cals. Whoa.’ Mia stops and peers hazily over the hedge next to them. ‘People in your street really take Hallowe’en seriously. Nearly every house is decorated.’
‘Yeah, there are a lot of little kids. Now walk, Mia, keep walking.’
Mia listens to the sound of her heels on the pavement. If she keeps her mouth closed and takes very small steps she’ll get to Callie’s house without throwing up, she thinks. She focuses on each house they pass, studying grotesque smiles on pumpkins and spotting skeletons hanging from trees and lounging in gardens. Fake spider webs have turned all the post boxes white, and plastic bats dangle from branches. A witch on a broom cackles and moves her head from side to side, flashing her red eyes, startling Mia. She jumps to the side and then looks at the house across the road, where Death sits on a swing.
‘Wow, look at that. That wasn’t here when we left,’ says Callie.
Mia looks over to where Callie is pointing. A life-size doll swings from a covered front porch. There isn’t a hint of a breeze but the dummy sways anyway, making the chain around its neck squeak eerily in the silent suburban street.
‘Isn’t that where Julia lives?’
‘Yeah, but she’s gone to Melbourne for uni. I haven’t seen her for ages.’
‘What’s she studying?’
‘I told you, remember – journalism. Everyone thought she was going to be an actress but then… boom… just like that, she changed her mind.’
‘We’re supposed to change our minds. My mum says now is the time to experiment.’
‘She means with careers, Mia, not how much alcohol you can consume in one night.’ Both girls erupt into hysterical laughter, struggling to stay standing. When they finally stop giggling Mia looks at the dummy hanging from the porch of the large house in front of them. The house rises up three storeys, looming over the flat green lawn that leads to the pavement. The white painted shutters on the windows are all closed and Mia thinks it looks like the house has shut its eyes for the night. The wide timber porch is decorated with potted plants and a swing, filled with artfully arranged pillows. A carved timber front door completes the magazine-perfect façade. It’s the biggest house in the street.
‘Why’ve they only got a dummy? Why don’t they have… like… some pumpkins?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t think Julia’s mum was into Hallowe’en. She’s too uptight.’
‘Weird that she doesn’t have any other decorations. Julia has a little brother, right?’
‘Two. But they’re not exactly little. They’re sixteen and eighteen.’
‘Is the eighteen-year-old hot?’
‘Mia, you’re twenty. But yeah… he is sooo hot, really built, with this gorgeous smile. He’s still in school so… maybe in a few years.’
‘He’s mine,’ Mia says, with a giggle.
‘You haven’t even seen him!’ Callie play-swats her friend on the arm. ‘You can’t call dibs on a boy you haven’t seen!’
‘Fine, whatever. But why do you reckon she has something up if her kids are big? My mum said that when my sister turned twelve she was “done with Hallowe’en”.’
‘Maybe she wants to be part of the neighbourhood or something? Cos if you don’t have something on your house then none of the kids knock on your door. They might like the kids knocking on their door?’ She pauses, considering. ‘Damn, now I feel like a burger. Let’s go and get a burger. Maybe we can order from Uber Eats.’
‘Let’s go and touch it,’ says Mia, nausea forgotten.
‘Touch what?’
‘The dummy. It’s so big. I want to touch it. Maybe it’s a boy dummy and we could…’ she says with a smirk.
‘Just gross, Mia! Do not even say it. Anyway, it’s got long hair. It’s a girl… maybe it’s a witch.’
‘I just want to touch it, Cals. I won’t do anything to it, I promise.’
‘What for? Ten more steps and we’ll be home. I can make popcorn and we can watch scary movies.’
‘I’ll make it move and freak everyone in the house out. Maybe the cute eighteen-year-old will be home and he’ll come out to see what’s happening and then… true love.’ Mia flings her arms apart and turns a slow circle.
‘He’s probably out at a party. Why do you want to touch that thing? It’s creepy.’
‘Just because, Callie. Come on.’
Callie sighs. If Mia gets an idea in her head, she knows nothing will stop her. Her friend crashes through the bushes at the front of the house and climbs onto the wooden railing surrounding the porch.
‘Why can’t you just go up the stairs?’ whispers Callie.
‘More fun this way,’ replies Mia, laughing.
Callie watches her friend’s ungainly climb over the railing, thinking that with her short dark hair and pointy chin she looks like a naughty pixie. She takes the stairs, reaching the dummy before Mia. She reaches out a tentative hand and touches the jeaned leg. It’s an odd costume for a Hallowe’en dummy. It has long blonde hair and is dressed in jeans and a red jumper. Not a skeleton in sight.
Callie feels her head clear a little. She takes a deep breath and squeezes the leg. It feels solid, heavy. She walks around the front of it and looks up at the dummy’s face, squinting in the pale light from the street. Dragging her phone out of her pocket, she turns on the torch, shining it up at the dummy’s face just as Mia comes to stand next to her.
In the light the face is clear. The eyes bulge, the lips are blue and swollen.
There is a beat of silence, a moment in time when all sound is drowned out.
Callie makes a strange noise, an animal howl that pierces the night.
Mia screams. Her whole body trembling, she screams and screams and screams.
My sweetest, darling Julia,
I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. Every time I close my eyes I see you standing before me. I reach out and trace the curve of your soft lips and touch the silky gold of your hair. I breathe in your smell which reminds me of a fresh spring morning.
Look at what you’ve done to me, Julia. I have never written a love letter before. I always wondered what kind of a person writes such a letter – how foolish and over the top they must be. But now I know that love letters are written by those who love more than spoken words can explain. I love like that now.
Look what has become of me because of you. Only you. What a wonderful secret I hold now. The secret of you. The secret of us.
Love x
I’ve never met a police detective before but Detective Sergeant Amanda Winslow seems the perfect person for such a job. She called an hour ago and asked if she could come over to discuss Julia. I’m sure she chose her words carefully, not wanting to use the past tense when only two days ago my daughter was still alive. I wanted to say, ‘There’s nothing to discuss any more.’ But I held my tongue and said, ‘Yes, of course,’ to her request.
Julia is in the past now. It’s a horrifyingly surreal thought. I am one of those people now, one of those mothers. You read about them. You fear their experiences and yet you never really believe you will become them. I am one of those and I am not sure I know how to be that person, how to survive being that person.
Two days ago Julia was happy. Two days ago Julia was thriving at university. Today Julia is gone and everything is called into question.
It was not her weekend to come up for a visit. I expected her to come home on the third weekend of every month. It was the deal we made when she moved to Melbourne to study. I made sure that she had a plane ticket ready, and Adrian or I picked her up at the airport. She had never driven back to Sydney before because of how long the journey took. If I’d known she was driving home I would have known something was terribly wrong, but I had no idea. No idea she was coming and no idea of what she had planned.
She hung herself while we slept, unaware of her anguish, unaware of her despair. She hung herself. When we took her down, hands trembling, and removed the chain, there was a necklace of link marks across her throat. Across her crushed windpipe. The image haunts me, will haunt me forever, I know, forcing out all the other moments of Julia’s life I carry around with me. I don’t want to remember her like that but no matter how hard I try the picture refuses to be erased.
‘I am so sorry for your loss,’ Detective Winslow says as she stands on the doorstep, her clear green eyes clouded with sympathy. She folds my hand in her own and nods at Adrian, standing behind me, as she talks. It seems impolite to pull away. The sharp, citrus smell of her perfume fills the air and I bite down on my lip so I don’t wrinkle my nose.
‘How old are you?’ I blurt out.
‘I’m thirty-two.’ She smiles. ‘I know I seem young, but I’ve been a detective for a year now.’
‘Would you like some tea?’ Adrian asks and I stand back, allowing the detective into my home. Adrian has decided that his current role is that of ‘tea maker’. Anyone who comes into the house is instantly offered a cup of tea as though the warm beverage will turn our conversations away from Julia’s death and on to more pleasant topics. Today he has already made me three cups.
When Julia was three years old she used to invite me to tea parties in her room. I had to bring a plate of biscuits and wear a big hat. We would greet each other with formal, ‘good afternoons,’ and then giggle as we drank tiny cups of chocolate milk.
‘Thanks, but I’m fine. Shall we sit down? I thought we could go through a few things.’
‘We told the constables everything already,’ says Adrian as he sits down, fidgeting with his mobile phone, clicking the button on the side, turning the screen on and off. He needs something to do with his hands.
Detective Winslow hitches up her slacks, as a man might, and sits down with her legs apart. She has broad shoulders and big hands. I imagine her squatting under a bar of heavy weights. I am comforted by her physicality. She is young but she looks strong and I can see victims of crime taking solace from her presence. Not that she can do much to help me.
‘I understand and I do know how hard it is to keep repeating the story, but the quicker we have all the pieces in place the quicker we can release… her, and you can have a funeral.’
‘Why do you have to keep her anyway?’ huffs Adrian. I grab the phone out of his hand and slam it down onto the coffee table. Adrian doesn’t say anything. Detective Winslow looks at her shoes for a moment to grant us some privacy. I take a deep breath and smile gently by way of apology for my behaviour. Adrian sits on his hands.
‘I’m sorry, but suicide is a reportable death and that means that there will have to be an autopsy and that the coroner will have to decide whether or not there needs to be an inquest.’
‘Why would there need to be an inquest?’ asks Adrian.
‘If we find anything we can’t explain, then it will need to be investigated.’
‘Such bullshit,’ says Adrian.
‘And how long will that take?’ I ask.
‘I’m hoping no longer than a few weeks,’ says the detective. She nods her head, agreeing with herself. Her skin is smooth and perfect. I imagine she is a fan of clean eating and alcohol-free weekends. ‘Basically I’m here to determine the manner and cause of Julia’s death, as well as the circumstances surrounding it. We have a few questions so we’re just looking into things a bit more thoroughly.’
‘What questions could you have? You know what happened,’ says Adrian.
‘Some of it, yes, but I’m sure if there is a reason for what happened you’ll want to know it,’ says the detective, looking at me.
‘I do,’ I agree. Oh I do, I do, I do.
‘Of course… we really want to… to understand what happened,’ says Adrian.
‘I just wanted to check again that you’ve definitely found no note of any sort from Julia, explaining her choice.’
Adrian looks at the wall behind the detective as I shake my head. ‘No, nothing.’ I feel the agony of that truth ripple through my body. Julia, who has always been able to express herself so clearly, didn’t know how to explain why she did what she did. I feel cheated of her final words, of her final thoughts. How much pain must she have been in? How confused and unhappy would she have been? What went through her head just before… just before.
‘She left us nothing,’ I repeat.
Detective Winslow clears her throat, driving the interview on. ‘I’ve already spoken with Callie and Mia, and I have a colleague in Melbourne who will be interviewing people at the university, but I wanted to check with you if there was anything going on in Julia’s life that could have made her unhappy. A broken romance, perhaps?’
‘She didn’t have a boyfriend,’ says Adrian.
‘How would we have known, Adrian?’ I shoot back. I direct my disdain towards him but really it’s for myself. I should have known. This is my failure. I’m her mother, and a good mother would have known.
Adrian shakes his head. ‘Claire, she would have told us – she always told us stuff like that.’
‘There was obviously a lot she wasn’t telling us,’ I say.
‘Both Callie and Mia agree that she didn’t have a boyfriend, so that may be the truth.’
‘The truth,’ I scoff.
I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure I don’t mean to be rude.
‘Do you want to take me through what happened again?’ she asks me.
‘I… I just can’t.’ I feel myself wilt against the sofa. I close my eyes.
‘We heard screaming,’ says Adrian. ‘That Callie girl was screaming and we came outside to check what was going on.’
‘You didn’t want to check it out,’ I say to him, keeping my eyes closed, hearing once again the ear-piercing, blood-curdling screams. ‘And it was Mia screaming, not Callie. Callie was making a weird noise. She sounded like a cat, like a cat who was afraid of something.’ I open my eyes. Both Adrian and the detective are staring at me.
‘I thought it was just kids coming back from a party,’ he says. ‘I told you that.’
‘Just kids,’ I repeat. I can’t seem to think straight.
‘I know how hard this is and I am so sorry for your loss.’ The detective shifts a little in her seat. ‘If you need anything at all just let me know. Someone will be in contact with you today to discuss counselling and anything else you may need help with.’
‘I don’t want to talk to anyone,’ I say.
‘I understand, but at a difficult time like this it can help to speak to someone who knows exactly how this process works.’
‘Difficult, yes,’ I agree, noting that she keeps using the word. ‘No thank you on the counselling,’ I say, as I roll the word around in my head. Diff-i-cult. Diffi-cult. D-ifficult. ‘I would prefer…’ I realise that I don’t know what I would prefer so my sentence trails off and I stand up to go to the kitchen and make myself another cup of tea since Adrian is not making any. I know as I fill the kettle that it will join all the others growing cold around the house.
‘She’s not coping very well,’ I hear Adrian tell the detective as I refill the kettle.
‘I don’t imagine it would be possible to cope well with something like this,’ she replies.
‘I can’t seem to say the right thing.’
‘There is no right thing to say, Mr Brusso. I’m sorry to have to ask, but can you take me through that night again, please?’
I push the button to start the kettle, letting the whooshing noise drown out Adrian’s words. I stand in the kitchen, studying the little rainbows the sun is creating on the counter top as it beams through the fairy wind-chimes hanging just outside the window. Julia begged me for the chimes when she was four and would rush to the kitchen every morning to watch the two dancing fairies move in the breeze. This morning, they tinkled and whirled in the wind, making me shudder at their delicate sound and the memory of Julia dancing along with them. I asked Adrian to take them down but he refused. ‘You don’t want that, Claire. One day you’ll be able to look at them and remember her with joy. Don’t take them away now.’ He was right, of course. As I look at them now, I realise it would have chipped off another piece from my already broken heart to see an empty space where the fairies used to hang.
‘They’re waving at me, Mum! They like my dancing.’
Adrian is worried that he can’t say the right thing to me. I think about what the right thing to say would be, what I want to hear from Adrian, or my mother, or my sister Emily, or Detective Winslow. I try to imagine what words would give me some comfort and strangely enough I believe I want to hear the detective say, ‘This isn’t suicide. This is a murder and we will find who did this,’ like the character of a hardened cop would on television. I yearn for there to be some conspiracy that I can untangle to find my daughter’s killer. If I cannot have her back, if she cannot be saved, then someone must pay for what has happened.
The kettle clicks off. I pour the hot water into a mug and watch the water darken.
But she isn’t going to say any of that. I know she isn’t. There is no conspiracy. No murder. No assailant who grabbed my daughter in the dark of Hallowe’en night and hung her from the porch.
The only person who can pay for this then, is me.
‘You cannot blame yourself for this,’ says my mother and my sister and my husband and the endless articles I have read on the internet. I cannot blame myself for this. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning, stared into my own eyes and thought, I cannot blame myself for this. And then, hands shaking, I took my favourite maroon-coloured lipstick out of the bathroom cabinet and scrawled, ‘MY FAULT,’ on the mirror. The lipstick broke on the last letter, crumbled and squashed against the glass. I tapped my reflection, watching tears spill and my nose run.
When I went back into the bathroom an hour later the mirror was clean, as though erasing the words could change what I’m thinking, could undo the terrible choice Julia made.
‘I tried CPR,’ I hear Adrian say. ‘I kept doing it until the paramedics came. I just kept pushing down on her chest and Claire was breathing into her mouth. I was afraid I was going to hurt her because I was pushing so hard.’ I stick my fingers in my ears. I don’t want to hear it again. I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to discuss it and I don’t want to deal with it. I want to stay in the kitchen, staring out of the window at the garden, where the camellias are in bloom with pure white flowers. I want to have nothing more to do today than plan dinner for Adrian and the boys. I want to forget that my daughter is dead and the tragic way that she died.
‘I feel like a boring middle-aged woman in a boring middle-of-the-road job. Nothing different ever happens. I wish my life had at least a modicum of excitement,’ I whined to Adrian last week.
‘Huh, careful what you wish for.’ Adrian had smiled. ‘Boring is good.’
Careful what you wish for.
‘Mrs Brusso,’ the detective calls. I reluctantly return to the living room.
‘One thing the doctor noticed was the bump on the back of Julia’s head,’ she says, when I have returned to my seat on the couch – minus the cup of tea, I realise. I had no intention of drinking it, anyway.
‘A bump,’ I repeat, turning the word over in my mind. A bump.
‘It was on the back of her head, around here,’ she says, touching her head at the back. ‘Do you know how it happened?’ I note the way she straightens herself in the chair. This then is what she has really come to discuss. A bump. Could it be…? Would it mean…? Is this the question she really came here to ask? I crack my knuckles in the silence.
‘A bump?’ I repeat when I run out of fingers to push and twist. ‘I… I don’t know. Adrian, do you know?’
Adrian looks up at the ceiling and then he closes his eyes. He’s picturing it and I see him flinch at the memory. There are new lines on his face today. Overnight he has begun to look his age.
‘I think maybe it happened when we got her down.’
‘Oh, yes… that must be it.’ I cover my mouth with my hand, lean forward and grab a tissue from the box on the coffee table.
‘Can you tell me what happened when you got her down?’ the detective asks gently.
‘I pulled the chain,’ Adrian replies after a moment. ‘I was trying to lift her to get her neck out of the… to get it out and while I was doing that I was pulling the chain as well. It was attached to the beam.’
‘Why was it attached to a beam?’
‘I was… I had put it up. I was going to hang a punching bag.’
‘A punching bag,’ repeats the detective. She sits forward, encouraging Adrian to keep talking by nodding along to his words.
‘It was for fitness, you know? I put it up about two weeks ago and I was going to hang the bag up but then I kind of… I guess I forgot.’
‘You put it up almost a month ago,’ I say.
Adrian grabs my hand. ‘Okay, a month ago. I’m sorry, Claire, I’ve said I’m sorry about that. I’ve said it a hundred times. I should have hung up the bag.’
I pull my hand away from him and fold my arms. ‘But you don’t finish the things you start at home because someone else will always do it for you.’
‘Claire.’ He sighs.
‘He was going to train every day using the bag,’ I tell the detective, rolling my eyes.
In the small hospital room, decorated with a fake leather couch and a wilted green plant, where they take you to tell you your child is dead, he confessed his oversight. Head bowed, he whispered his mistake, his lapse, his small slip-up.
‘I meant to hang it up, I just forgot.’
‘You just forgot?’ I studied the grey carpet, pushing my foot over a dark stain, thinking about another family who were brought in here for their own devastating news and imagining someone – a mother or a father – dropping their coffee in shock and despair. ‘You just forgot,’ I stated, because Adrian had subsided into silence.
‘. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
