Forbidden Fruit

The last thing Nell Forrest expected when she tried to plant a tree
was to unearth the skeletal remains of a former resident. Now her new
backyard is swarming with police, there's a television news crew camped
next door, and once again she is smack in the middle of a murder
investigation. And the timing is dreadful. Two of Nell's daughters are
about to give birth and she is surrounded by new in-laws with agendas of
their own.

But it soon becomes clear that this time the
investigation is personal – so personal that enquiries bring her
long-estranged father back into the family fold, and the answers shed
some very uncomfortable light about the proclivities of her parents when
they were young. Who would have thought that the little country town of
Majic had ever been such a swinging place to live?

This time it’s personal...

The last thing Nell Forrest expected when she tried to plant a tree was to unearth the skeletal remains of a former resident. Now her new backyard is swarming with police, there’s a television news crew camped next door, and once again she is smack in the middle of a murder investigation. And the timing is dreadful. Two of Nell’s daughters are about to give birth and she is surrounded by new in-laws with agendas of their own. 

But it soon becomes clear that this time the investigation is personal – so personal that enquiries bring her long-estranged father back into the family fold, and the answers shed some very uncomfortable light about the proclivities of her parents when they were young. Who would have thought that the little country town of Majic had ever been such a swinging place to live?  

Much of this book revolves around events that took place in 1970. So it’s only fitting that I dedicate it to those who were most important to me (apart from family) back then: Mandy, Kim, Magda, Shani, Jane, Shannon, Brendan. Lots of sunshine, lots of tennis, lots of growing up – and, rather fortunately, not a single murder.

The skull sat snugly in the earth, partly uncovered, its dome curiously flat across the top and then sloping towards the indentation of one eye socket. It was the colour of chalk and quite smooth, apart from a jagged gash across the crown. A less knowledgeable, more impetuous observer might assume that this gash indicated cause of death, however I knew better. Not merely because I had some experience in the art of forensics, but also, and probably more relevantly, because I still held the spade responsible.

I used a corner of the cutting edge to scrape off more dirt and wondered what species I had uncovered. The skull seemed a little too rounded to be bovine, and too large to be feline; which left canine as the most likely contender. A large one, I guessed, perhaps a St Bernard or Rottweiler. But whatever its original identity, it was going to have to vacate this area forthwith. Nearby, and all ready for planting, was a six-foot tall columnar apple tree. ‘Charlotte’ according to the nursery salesman, although I wasn’t sure if this was a generic name or whether he named each of his trees prior to sale. Regardless, my mental image had Charlotte flourishing in this corner by the fence, providing plentiful apples that I would collect in a wicker basket, perhaps wearing a frilly apron and breaking into the occasional song. Skeletal remains simply didn’t go with the ambience.

I leant on the spade and gazed back towards my new home. As always, the sight brought a frothy sense of pleasure. Substantial renovations had been required post-settlement, meaning I had owned the property since October but had only moved mid-January, just over a week ago. The rooms were still lined with removalist boxes waiting to be unpacked and pictures waiting to be hung and bubble wrap that seemed to be breeding. Two hours ago I had stood in the middle of the lounge room, almost paralysed by the scale of the task ahead, and made the impromptu decision to start on the garden instead. ‘Procrastinate now; don’t put it off,’ as Ellen DeGeneres so wisely once said.

From here I could see not only the rear of my new home but also the identical one next door, the two houses sharing a central wall. I had purchased the pair. Originally shops, sidelined and deserted when the main street was reconfigured over forty years ago, I had landed them at a bargain price. Probably because the rooms had been in a considerable state of disrepair, the cast-iron cresting over the Edwardian shop fronts stippled with rust, the pilasters peeling, the windows boarded and covered with graffiti, and the facia boards carrying only a faded description of their original calling. Mine was
Forrest & Son Butchers
, the
Forrest
of the equation having been my father and the
son
non-existent. Perhaps that was one of the reasons the former had departed shortly after the shops closed, relocating to the other side of the world and commencing a propagation program that had given me an array of half-siblings along the Cornish coast – including, rather ironically, several sons.

I knew that both my mother and sister suspected my purchase was rooted in some type of Freudian father/daughter complex. But I knew that it was more a marriage of coincidence and timing, alongside the flickering shadow of happy memories; sawdust and risqué jokes and the slither of the butcher’s steel, all framed by a gilt-edged sense of security. They gave my ownership depth. So despite the upheaval, and despite the move having also involved passing my family home of the past twenty-five years to my ex-husband and his new partner, I had not a single regret. In fact, I was seriously considering having the facia board, now carefully removed from the frontage, restored to its original glory – with one minor addition. A line would be drawn through ‘son’ and the word ‘daughters’ added in graffiti-style font. This would reflect me and my sister, as well as the five daughters I had generously added to the family tree. The sign could be hung in the garden, perhaps beside Charlotte, as a symbol of both the past and the future, entwined.

So the skull was quite definitely at odds. However logic suggested that, as in life, it was likely to be connected to a larger structure, and this meant considerably more digging than I had envisaged. Plus, what was the correct method of disposal? Could I pop it in the wheelie bin alongside the remains of yesterday’s satay chicken? It suddenly occurred to me that it might not be canine after all, but simply a by-product of the long-gone butcher trade. Perhaps Forrest & Son Butchers had been in the habit of burying carcasses in the backyard when the bins were full. Perhaps the entire backyard was studded with skeletal remains. Excellent.

‘Mum! Hey, Mum!’

I squinted through the sunshine towards my youngest daughter, who was leaning against the balustrade of her upstairs veranda. She owed this extravagance to the builder’s casual suggestion that I utilise the roof of the little study I had included below, behind the garage and abutting the kitchen. What he had failed to mention was that the acoustics would give her thudding footsteps a hitherto undreamt-of power over my sanity while trying to work. So far I had only managed to churn out half of one of my weekly columns, and that only because I had written about the annoyance of thudding footsteps. Thank goodness summer holidays were almost over.

‘Can I go over to Caitlin’s for Australia Day tomorrow? They’re having a barbecue with friends and stuff.’

I shaded my eyes but she still sparkled. ‘Maybe
we’re
having a barbecue with friends and stuff.’

‘Are we?’

‘Well, no. But we
could
be.’ I pictured Charlotte shading a little courtyard, with crazy paving and a hooded barbecue. I made a mental note to price crazy paving. And barbecues.

‘So can I?’

‘Okay. But I can’t give you a lift; I’m working for the day at Grandma’s. You know she doesn’t believe in public holidays or socialising. Anyway, look: I found a skull.’ I prodded the object with my foot and dirt sprinkled across the eye socket, making it seem as if it just winked.

‘Really? Hang on, I’m coming down!’

Quinn vanished from view. I could see my reflection in the downstairs sliding door so I stood side on and sucked my stomach in, which would have looked quite acceptable if not for my hair, which sprang forth in a corkscrew curly mop that turned the silhouette into a cartoon. I had tried growing it last year but it had remained stubbornly resistant to making the switch from width to length. I soon discovered that most people, whether friends, family or total strangers, did not enjoy brushing someone else’s hair out of their eyes. Despite what the Pantene ads would have you believe.

My reflection, hair and all, was subsumed by the approach of Quinn from the other side, closely followed by our dog. This latter family member was a scruffy white Westie cross with shiny, black-button eyes that gave the misleading impression of intelligence. As soon as the door opened, he raced across the yard to Charlotte and lifted a leg to pee against her trunk.

‘That
is
a skull.’ Quinn was now squatting by the shallow hole, using a stick to prod it. Her brown hair was caught back in a high ponytail that bounced.

‘Thank you for the confirmation. Here was I thinking it might be, say, a rock.’

‘Actually, if you’re ever confused whether something is bone or rock, then you, like, just put a bit on your tongue. Rock is cold.’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t even know where to start with that statement.’

‘I haven’t done it myself.’ She started digging with the stick. ‘I just read it. Hey, maybe this is a pet cemetery. Like in Stephen King.’

Gusto did a sideways hop to avoid his own urine before giving it a good sniff. Clearly satisfied that it was indeed his, he trotted over to stand by us, tongue lolling. He fixed his gaze on the skull, raised his eyebrows, and then glanced at me with an anticipatory expression. I shook my head.

The sliding door opened once more and my second-youngest daughter came through. My five ranged from Scarlet, who was a twenty-five-year-old police officer stationed in Melbourne, to the fourteen-year-old forensics expert who was now trying to clear an eye socket with her stick. In between there was Ruby, who was currently doing volunteer work in Thailand, then Bronte, better known as Red, and twenty-one-year-old Lucy, now making her way gingerly over the uneven ground. The reason for this gingerness was the fact that she, along with her eldest sister Scarlet, was due to give birth in a few weeks. But Lucy wore her pregnancy lightly, her slim figure relatively unchanged, the baby high and hard beneath her breast. My heart constricted.

There was something incredibly surreal about seeing your child, with child. A sense of organic order, yet fundamentally anomalous at the same time. I wanted to stop time, just to let me catch my breath, perhaps have an artist paint a picture of them both as they were right now, with plump cheeks and blooming bellies, so that I could sit back and just stare for a while. Familiarise myself with this shift in perspective before it moved on.

However there were additional reasons that this child, in particular, tugged at my heart. She possessed an ethereal quality absent in her sisters, even the youngest; a fragility that pulsed, eggshell thin, alongside a selflessness that often nudged
her
out of the equation altogether. And then there were the practicalities of the matter. While Scarlet was partnered and secure and stable, with generous leave entitlements that enabled choice, Lucy was not. She was a university dropout who worked for her grandmother, my mother, at the local bookshop. Her pregnancy was the result of a brief fling with a former boyfriend who himself was struggling with his sexuality, and lastly, but by no means leastly, she appeared to view the entire situation as some type of punishment. Giving the baby up for adoption was therefore, apparently, a fitting conclusion.

Alongside these concerns were others, which I was even more reluctant to explore, where I struggled with the whole concept of grandmotherhood. It felt so sudden, so cumbersome. Grandmothers were older women, with greying hair and crêpey necks, who clustered framed photos on mantlepieces and planted signs in their gardens that read
Grandchildren spoilt here.
Grandmothers knitted and crocheted and produced cakes made from scratch. Grandmothers slept with grandfathers.

‘Hey, Mum.’ Lucy’s blonde hair was plaited and she looked about the same age as Quinn.

‘Hey, honey. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’ She stopped by the gravesite and examined the skull. ‘D’you know, vegies would probably be more practical.’

‘Ha ha. It was buried here. Someone’s pet or something.’

‘Luce, can you give me a lift to Caitlin’s tomorrow?’ asked Quinn, squinting up at her sister. ‘They’re having an Australia Day barbecue.’

‘Invasion Day more like it,’ replied Lucy. ‘Nothing to celebrate.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘It’s a no. Sorry, Q. I cannot even covertly support a commemoration of genocide.’

Quinn gave her a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look. To change the subject, I pointed towards Charlotte with the spade. ‘What do you think of my apple tree? Her name’s Charlotte.’

‘Very nice. Fresh apples. Yum.’

‘There’s a girl in my history class called Charlotte,’ commented Quinn. ‘She’s a bitch. Most probably she hates Australia Day too.’

‘I was thinking of getting apple blossom on my thigh,’ said Lucy, ignoring her sister. She gathered up her maxi skirt, displaying a pale leg as well as the rose tattoo across one ankle. The material bunched beneath her belly. ‘Or cherry blossoms. Or maybe a willow.’

‘Why not tattoo an entire garden?’ I asked. ‘Saves planting. And it’s such a good look.’

Quinn looked up hopefully. ‘Then can I get a –’

‘No. I was being sarcastic.’

‘But seriously, Mum …’ Lucy lowered her skirt and regarded the skull once more. ‘You probably should find another spot for your tree. It’s bad feng shui.’

‘And it’s like totally wedged,’ said Quinn crossly, sitting back on her haunches. She threw her stick towards the house and Gusto ran to fetch it.

‘Hop out of the way.’ I waited for her to move and then thrust the spade towards the side of the skull, pressing down hard. I didn’t want to find another spot, this one was perfect. I brought the spade up at an angle, with effort, and dirt showered like a fountain as the skull shot out of its cocoon. It bounced once and rolled across the ground, coming to a stop by Charlotte, alongside the puddle of Gusto’s pee. Somewhat taken aback by the success of my venture, it took me a few moments to register that it was a far more rounded object than I had hitherto thought. It was also minus the elongated snout that would render it canine. Instead the large eye sockets dipped to a distinct nasal cavity and then to a partially disarticulated jaw. Surprisingly pearly teeth studded the bone.

‘Shit, Mum!’ said Lucy.

I blinked. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s … human!’

‘Yes.’

‘Which means …’

‘Yes.’ I followed her gaze to the skull’s original resting place. Now I could see the dull shine of what were probably vertebrae among the freshly upturned dirt. A stiff curl of thready, dun-coloured material protruded from one side almost jauntily. I swallowed.

Quinn had shuffled forward again and was staring down, mouth open. She reached out a hand tentatively, then pulled it back.

‘And you just …’

‘Yes,’ I said again, not wanting Lucy to finish the sentence. I knew what I had just done. The evidence was there for us all to see.
Woman who decapitated corpse claims ignorance. Experts concur.

‘No, Gusto!’ yelled Quinn. The dog froze, one paw atop the skull, and then backed away reluctantly.

I have always prided myself on my ability to remain calm under pressure, but on this occasion I was aided by a feeling of numbness. Phone calls needed to be made, and clearly Charlotte would have to be relocated, at least temporarily. These were priorities. In the meantime, I wasn’t going to think about the fact I had just sent the remains of somebody’s head skittering across my backyard, let alone that I had rendered a spade-shaped indentation across the temple; there would be time for all that later. Procrastination may have started all this, but it still seemed like the best way forward.