Darkwater (7 page)

Fact: Kate didn't know Amanda had been seeing Lyndon.

Or at least that was what she told Joe, and I only know this because I heard Joe and Dee talking the morning after the police interview.

Joe had called Kate that night. She'd been as surprised by the news as he was. And then she had backtracked, saying that it might have been possible, and that she'd begun to wonder whether she knew Amanda at all.

I guess they all felt like that.

Cassie had no trouble believing that the rumour about Amanda and Lyndon was plausible. Sonia and I weren't so sure.

We sat on the street, once again talking about her and how she could have died. The jacarandas were still, but to the south the clouds were condensing as a storm built, moving slowly towards us. The first fat hot drops would soon sizzle on the bitumen, leaving slicks of rainbow oil smeared across the tar.

I had been showing Cassie and Sonia my skateboard moves, which consisted of little more than being able to roll precariously for a few metres, then leaping off before the steep incline that led to the waterfront. Despite practising, I hadn't improved all that much, but I persisted, partly because I wanted to learn but also because when I got on the board, I felt like I was closer to Nicky, foolish as that may sound.

‘So that's it?' Sonia shrugged.

I handed the board to her. ‘You give it a go.'

The deck rolled too fast, and she wobbled, hastily jumping off, leaving it to race all the way to the bottom of the hill.

‘Go get it,' I grinned, pointing to the end of the street, ‘Miss So-That's-It.'

As she carried it back up towards us, Bradley Parsons came out of the gate with his mother. Each Saturday she took him off to a sheltered workshop, picking him up again in the late afternoon. Squeezing himself into the front seat, he rolled down the window, peering out at the darkening sky, while he waited for his mother to start the car.

‘Hi,' he called out to Sonia, who did her best to ignore him.

With the window still down, he continued to call out as Mrs Parsons pulled the car out onto the road and began to drive up the steep incline towards us.

It was Cassie who responded – ‘Hi Bradley' – and she waved.

‘I love you,' he told her, leaning out the window as the car picked up speed, his voice loud and booming.

We giggled.

The branches of the trees overhead began to stir, and with the onset of the wind, the first rain fell, finally breaking what had felt like weeks of unbearable heat. Cassie screamed as a crack of thunder shattered the stillness and the birds, twittering wildly, flew off in a great arcing swoop.

‘Lets go to the caves.' I made the suggestion out of habit, because this was where we hung, but it was only as we were running down the hill, leaping the stairs two at a time, that I wished we'd just gone to my place. The waterfront now held a menace it had never had before.

The river was choppy, tiny white waves crisscrossing its once smooth surface, the water a deep lead green. As we reached the shade of the first desert oaks, each needle glittering with rain, the storm picked up in intensity.

We made a run for it. Across the burnt grass, whipping our ankles like paper cuts, to the rocks, the sandstone a deep orange swirled with cream and ochre as it soaked up the wet. My thongs were slippery and I had to be careful now, not wanting to fall on the sharp oyster blades, while the other two, who were in their sandals, ran ahead of me.

It wasn't until we were right near the entrance to the first cave that we saw Lyndon. He was sitting on his own, knees to his chest, a half-empty bottle of what looked like Brandivino next to him, a pack of cigarettes beside it. Seemingly oblivious to the downpour, he hadn't moved back under the shelter of the rock lip, but had stayed where he was, his dark brown hair slicked across his forehead, his shirt soaked through, and his faded jeans a deeper blue from the rain.

The tide was high and unless he moved back, our knees would literally brush against his face as we tried to edge through to the next cave.

It was Sonia who summoned the courage, asking him if we could get past.

‘Nothing stopping you.' He didn't look at her and it was hard to make out his words against the pounding of the rain.

We had no choice but to squeeze past him, the legs of his jeans cold and wet as I pressed closer than I wanted, and then, just as I was almost out of his reach, he grasped my ankle, his hand clammy on my skin.

I tried to squirm out of his grasp, scared I would overbalance and fall into the river below.

‘Have a drink.' He went to lift the bottle and knocked it over, the last of the alcohol running out across the rocks and into a pool before he could stop it. The bottle then rolled, bobbing up and down in the tide, as it floated away.

I stepped backwards, wanting only to keep walking with the others to the cave, but I didn't. I kept staring at him.

‘What are you looking at?' He was leering now, trying to stand, his balance wrong as he clutched onto a rock ledge and hauled himself up.

I took another step backwards, the roar of the rain on the river too loud for the others to hear me if I screamed and there was a moment when I felt I should call out because he was frightening me, but then I also realised he was too drunk to focus any sort of harm on me.

‘You should be careful,' I told him, when I finally found the nerve to speak.

He just stared at me.

‘You're drunk. You could fall and drown.'

He leant against the rock, his eyes half-closed. ‘Like Amanda?' And I couldn't tell whether it was tears on his cheeks or just the slashing of the rain.

He turned his back on me and began to pick his way slowly, precariously, along the rock ledge towards the grassy reserve below the path back up to our street. I almost followed to make sure he was safe, but I was scared and I knew that he would only push me away. So, instead, I stayed where I was, watching him, ready to run if he slipped and fell (although whether I would have had the strength to drag him out of the water is doubtful), until he had made his way off the rocks and away from the rush of the river.

I was drenched. My jeans and T-shirt left a pool of water on the floor of the cave and I pressed back against the cool roughness of the sandstone wall as I tried to wring them out, my teeth chattering with the sudden cold.

Cassie and Sonia were only a little drier, and the three of us huddled close. There was the remains of a fire, burnt ashes and clumps of charcoal, black and ready to crumble in your hand. In the corner was enough dry wood to light a small flame. The problem was matches.

Cassie grinned. She had some in her pocket, along with a now sodden joint she had nicked from home. The paper disintegrated in her hand, the small amount of dope wet on her palm. I was glad it was going to be impossible to smoke. The last thing I felt like was another attempt at getting stoned. The matches, however, weren't much better. The tip flaked away as she tried to strike it against the side of the box. I rubbed both dry and she tried again and again, until eventually there was a small sputter of flame, enough to catch the end of a twig.

‘There's no way she would have even looked at him,' Sonia said, returning to the topic of Lyndon and Amanda.

I coughed in the smoke and moved a little closer to the cave entrance. ‘You're the one who always says he's sexy.'

‘He has a certain something,' she conceded. ‘But you see him that pissed...'

Outside the storm had stopped. The freshness of the southerly was pushing the clouds, clearing patches of blue in the sky, washed by a watery sunshine. The current was a petrol blue now, dark and oily, the tide slapping downriver with a newfound vigour after the lazy torpor of so many long, hot days.

Standing out on the rock ledge, I looked to see whether Lyndon had left the reserve. There was no sign of him, the pale grass flattened by the downpour.

‘I reckon it's possible.' Cassie wrung the ends of her hair. ‘There was something going on with her. Remember?' She looked at me for confirmation. ‘That afternoon with Joe? She wanted to say but she couldn't.'

I nodded.

‘Maybe she was pregnant to him.' Cassie's eyes widened as she imagined. ‘Maybe he didn't want her to keep the baby and maybe she did. Remember?' She turned to me again. ‘She said everything was shit.'

I did remember.

‘But perhaps she backed out. She wanted to keep the baby. And Lyndon freaked out when he heard, they had an argument, he pushed her, and left. She hit her head and she died.'

Cassie had her hands on her hips; the look of satisfaction on her face was hard to mistake.

‘Solved.' She grinned. ‘Detective O'Donnell figures out another case.'

It was plausible, I had to admit. ‘But there's no evidence.'

Sonia wasn't budging. ‘I still reckon she would never have gone round with him. She was Amanda. He's Lyndon. And besides, someone would have known they were together.'

‘Someone did.' Cassie had her arms crossed now. ‘Or else why would the police have asked Joe whether it was true?'

Behind us the fire was going out. The thick smoke had forced us all out into the open now, and we stood on the ledge, only metres from where they had found her body. I looked down at the river, not wanting to imagine, but unable to stop myself from seeing her, her long brown hair floating out like silk.

‘So what are you going to do, Detective O'Donnell?' Sonia smirked. ‘Take your theory to the police?'

‘I might.' And then she looked at me again. ‘You should ask Joe.'

Joe wouldn't know, I told her. ‘If he did, he would have said something to the cops.'

I remembered his voice. He had sounded genuinely surprised when the police had asked him about Amanda and Lyndon. He wasn't acting, I was sure of it. And even if he was, it was unlikely he'd tell me anything.

‘Maybe it's even simpler than that,' Cassie continued, pleased with her success. ‘They could have just got it together a few times and then she wanted to end it and he was angry, pushed her – you know, same thing.' She was pacing along the rock ledge now. ‘Or it could be even worse. He actually held her under until she drowned.'

‘You don't know any of this.' I wanted to stop Cassie. Lyndon had been here only moments before. He was someone I had known since I was young and even though I had never liked him, I didn't want to think he was capable of taking a life.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘No one knows anything. Except whoever did it, of course. It's just ideas, and you have to have them. It's how you then figure out what actually happened.' She paused. ‘You know, I wouldn't mind being a cop. I kind of like the uniform too.'

I rolled my eyes. ‘You'd have to give up your drug habit.' I pointed to her pocket where she had stuffed the remains of the soggy joint.

Sitting out on the ledge, where Lyndon had sat in the pouring rain, I picked up a stone and skimmed it across the surface of the river, counting the leaps it made as it danced over the surface, lightly touching the water before skipping on. In the warmth of the watery sunshine my clothes were still damp, and I told the others I wanted to go home and get changed.

‘I'll come with you,' Sonia said.

Cassie, too, was ready to leave. Maybe it was just me, but I don't think so: it had changed down there, and the weight of what had happened made me wonder whether any of us would ever want to hang in the place where we had once spent so much time.

Fact: Amanda told Stevie she was seeing someone else.

I could only presume this was a fact. There was no reason for Stevie to lie to me, none that I knew of in any event.

I saw him the day after the storm. We were both riding our bikes through the backstreets, weaving across the road from footpath to footpath. I was heading down towards the end of the peninsula where the rally was being held, and he was heading home.

Usually I was careful not to complain that I was bored to Dee. She was always quick to give me chores. But sometimes I forgot, and other times she just saw me, lying listlessly (as she liked to describe it) in our sunken lounge, or sitting in the kitchen, giving monosyllabic responses to her attempts at conversation. That was how she roped me in to the Greenwood Bush protest she had been busy organising for the last month.

‘If you have nothing to do, we need the numbers.' She was trying to cram placards into the back of the car, and I could see she was irritated with how few she could fit in. ‘Instead of moping around in a self-absorbed stupor, you could consider putting something back into the world.'

‘I do,' I protested. ‘Every day.'

She raised her eyebrows.

‘Conversation, wit, charm, intelligence.'

She didn't even smile.

‘Besides there's no room for me in the car.'

‘You have your bike.'

‘It'll be boring,' I protested.

‘Well you hardly appear to be actively engaged with anything here.' She slammed the boot shut, and then turned to face me. I could see I was about to get a serious talk, one aimed at making me feel guilty, and I braced myself, wishing I'd had the foresight to stay in my room until she left.

‘There's a whole world out there,' she told me. ‘And it doesn't revolve around you. If you stay within you own petty range of self interests, I can guarantee your life will be dull and aimless. You have been blessed with good fortune. You've never wanted for anything. You have your health. And yes, you do have a certain amount of intelligence, although you frequently fail to exhibit it. Why not occasionally think about giving a bit back? Doing something that will benefit others, helping to make the world a better place, even if those others turn out to be the next generation you don't yet know. If you put in, you'll be surprised at what comes back.'

I looked at the ground, kicking at the gravel in the driveway with the toe of my thong.

‘I'm doing this because I don't want you and your children to live in a world where greed and business rule, where there is no remaining green space, where we no longer know what our bushland was like, and where companies like Atkinson Development think they can ride roughshod over what the community wants. But sometimes I'd like to think that I was doing it for someone who actually cares about those things.' Her gaze was hard.

‘All right,' I told her, hands in the air. ‘I'll get my bike. But I'm not waving one of those.' I pointed at the remaining placards she'd left lying on the ground.

I rode slowly, wishing I'd never agreed but knowing I had no choice now. It was just after midday, and the empty streets were littered with fallen branches and leaves from the downpour.

I saw Stevie as I swung past the primary school. He lived at the back, next to Marshall House, a derelict mansion we used to believe was haunted, and the place where we always played truth or dare. Once I had to get as far as the verandah and knock on the door. I was terrified. Sonia went even further, stepping inside. I remember her scream, as harsh and chill as the shattering of ice.

‘There was something there,' she told us, and although we all stirred her, we were secretly glad that she – and not one of us – had been the one who'd had to venture in.

In those days, I'd had a crush on Stevie. He was always the nicest of Joe's friends, the one who'd chat to me when he came over or ask me if I wanted to join them, oblivious to the fact that Joe would be rolling his eyes in dismay. I used to climb the Moreton Bay fig that grew, like a prehistoric giant with huge rolling limbs, and try and spy on him. In fact, one of my dares had been to declare my love for him from one of the higher branches, making sure I shouted loud enough for him to hear. I opened my mouth, prepared to call out his name, and then I chickened out, finally scrambling down the branches, knowing I would have to pay the penalty – kissing Simon Chalmers.

As I waved to him, Stevie stopped.

‘Is Joe home?' he asked.

I told him I didn't know where he was, although he could be at Kate's. He'd been hanging there a lot lately.

He turned to go, and then, without knowing why, I asked him if he was okay.

‘Yeah.' He shrugged, and then after a moment's pause he told me that, no, he wasn't okay, and he wiped at his eyes, as surprised as I was by the tears.

I let my bike fall to the ground and we sat side by side in the gutter while he cried.

‘I miss her, you know,' he eventually told me. ‘I feel shit about how angry I was with her when she dumped me. She told me there was someone she liked. She never said who, but it was why she wanted to finish it.' He looked up at the sky, his eyes red-rimmed from the tears, and I watched as he breathed in deeply. ‘The last thing I said to her was that I wished she was dead.'

When he eventually uttered the words, they were tight, clipped, and I could see the whiteness of his knuckles as he clenched his fist on the torn knee of his jeans. ‘The police asked me if I did it.'

‘They don't think that.' I looked at him, knowing he wasn't going to turn his head to me. He was locked in himself and my presence was irrelevant. ‘No one thinks that.' I didn't know what else to say.

He stood up, wiping at his eyes.

‘Her dad thinks that.'

As I began to deny the possibility, he interrupted me.

‘He came round last night. Told Mum and Dad I'd made anonymous calls to her. I did call her and hang up. But I didn't kill her.'

‘He would have just been upset,' I protested, ‘and wanting someone to blame.' I stood now as well, awkwardly trying to touch his arm, not knowing how to comfort him or what to say.

He picked up his bike, and I heard him sniff loudly. His eyes were still red but all traces of tears were gone.

We crossed the road without looking, almost walking into the path of an oncoming car. It was Len Atkinson, Cherry's dad. I jumped back as he wound down the window.

‘What the fuck are you doing?' And then seeing it was me, his face went purple with rage. ‘You're just like your bloody mother. A troublemaker.'

Cherry was in the front seat with him, her face turned away from us, her jaw tight. I could only assume she was embarrassed. And then she opened the door suddenly, almost knocking me backwards, and slammed it shut behind her.

‘Get back in the car.' Len's anger was turned towards her now. He leant across the passenger seat, reaching for her, but she stepped away.

‘Suit yourself, you silly slut.' He drove off, leaving Cherry standing with us.

‘I've got to go.' I didn't know what to say to Cherry. Her dad had been a bastard, but you can't tell someone how bad their parents are. ‘It's the protest,' I explained, speaking before I remembered that the whole demonstration was being organised against Len Atkinson's development.

‘I know,' Cherry told me. ‘I may see you there.'

Stevie shook his head as she turned and walked away from us. ‘She wouldn't dare.'

My bike handles were clammy in my hands and I wiped the black stain from the grip down the side of my shorts. ‘Shall I tell Joe to give you a call?'

He nodded.

With the slight breeze in my hair, I pedalled fast, coasting down the hill that led towards the very tip of the peninsula, where the two rivers merged in the depths of the harbour. On one side was the baths. We never swam there. The old wooden railings had rotted, and the stairs were slimy with slippery weed that sent you sliding if you failed to concentrate. The water was dark, the bottom never visible, and when the tide sucked out the mud smelt rank, pocked with crab holes and crusted on the top underneath the baking sun.

On the other side was the reserve. There were cars parked all the way up the small turn-off that led down to the entrance, and then along the main road where I had been riding. I suppose I had expected about twenty people, the women that Dee hung out with gathered in a pitiful group, applauding each other's efforts at trying to save what still seemed to me to be nothing more than fairly ordinary scrub. I leant my bike against a telegraph pole, hearing it clatter to the ground only moments after I left it, and turned into the track that curved into a small clearing.

I could hear the numbers before I saw them. A man was on a megaphone, his voice booming in the way that Mr Castle's boomed at assembly, as he promised that this pocket of pristine bushland would be saved. The cheer was like a roar, and as I turned the corner, I saw them all, women, kids and men, some waving placards, others clapping their hands in agreement with the speaker.

‘This is one of the last open spaces we have left on this peninsula and they want to bulldoze it for houses for the rich.' The crowd was booing now, and despite myself I joined in, the tingles shooting up my spine as I heard all the voices together. ‘I can assure you that every single one of our men has refused to work on this site.' The hoots and the applause were even louder this time. ‘And with our ban there will be no way Atkinson Development will destroy this bushland or others like it.'

I noticed Mrs Scott sitting under the shade of a tree on the edge of the gathering, and I made my way towards her. She was fanning her face with a photocopied leaflet, a lime-green cotton sunhat in one hand, her grey curls damp with sweat.

‘Isn't it marvellous,' she whispered to me.

I nodded in agreement.

‘Your mother should be very proud of herself.'

‘Does it mean they've won?'

‘It's a significant victory.' Mrs Scott smiled. ‘But in matters like this, there's never just one battle.'

Above our heads, a kookaburra let out a loud cackle, a blur of powder blue and soft brown as it swooped from the long bleached branch of the tree on which it had been perched to another. I watched it fluff up its crown, the feathers soft and downy, before it tossed back its head and opened its beak wide to let out another full-throated laugh, the ripple swelling out across the brilliant blue sky.

‘Why are the builders saying they're not going to work here?' I leant closer to be heard above the continuing speeches. ‘Doesn't it mean they won't have a job?'

She took a bobby pin from the front pocket of her skirt and slid it into her hair, holding back the wispy curls before putting her hat back on. She looked like she was young again, as alive as she'd been in the photograph she'd shown me of her down by the river, sharing a picnic with the man who had drowned.

‘That is the truly marvellous thing,' she said. ‘Those builders have decided that being part of their union means more than just protecting their short-term interest in having a job. It is about who they are as people, and they believe it is imperative to think in a much broader sense, to protect our bush and our heritage and preserve what is important for the next generation, over and above getting a few months' work with a company like Atkinson. They've imposed a green ban on this site because they see it as a harmful development for our environment and our future. No union members will work here.'

‘Does it mean they'll never work for any developer?' I was thinking of Tom at that point and wondering what today would mean for him.

But Mrs Scott was no longer listening. A woman I didn't know had come over and was giving her a hug.

‘What a day,' the other woman said, and then noticing me, she introduced herself.

‘This is Dee's daughter,' Mrs Scott explained, ‘although a person in her own right as well.' She squeezed my hand.

‘You must congratulate your mother on our behalf.'

I looked for Dee among the swarm of people. Actually, what I wanted was for her to see me so that she would know I'd come as I'd promised I would. I clambered up onto one of the rocks and was scanning the tops of the heads, when, to my surprise, she walked up to the megaphone, the cheering now louder than ever before. It took me a moment to realise that it was, in fact, her name they were chanting – ‘Dee, Dee, Dee' – and as the sound swelled, I too was clapping and calling out her name, the sharp sting of possible tears pricking in my eyes.

Standing there with the megaphone in her hand, my mother didn't look dazed or overwhelmed, or embarrassed or shy. She was perfectly still, her sunglasses pushed up on her head, her gaze clear and direct as she finally silenced the crowd.

‘There have been many who have tried to belittle us,' the hoots and roars died down as her voice rang out, clear and sharp, ‘who have called us a bunch of middle-class housewives,' and the cheer from the crowd was raucous as she uttered these words, ‘and they should be warned. We were never going to just give up and disappear back into our kitchens when the going got rough. We were never going to shut up, we were never going to be compliant. In their arrogance, they misread us.'

I too was calling out: ‘Go, Dee.' My voice cracked as I looked at this woman who was my mother, but also someone I didn't know.

‘This is what a bunch of middle-class housewives can do.' The wolf-whistles and shouts continued, and she went right on speaking over the top, gesturing to the man who had spoken before her. ‘This is what a bunch of yobbo builders can do. This is what we have done – together.'

The applause was like the rush and roar of the sea, momentous, overwhelming, all of us whistling and cheering as Dee stepped down.

I tried to make my way through the crowd towards her but it was hopeless, and as I edged back to the tree where I had found Mrs Scott, I was surprised to see Joe sitting on top of one of the boulders next to Kate. He had his arm around her, and she was leaning in close, but there was a tension in Joe's shoulder and a twist in her waist that showed neither felt accustomed to the other.