Forbidden Fruit (13 page)

He must have picked up on the subtext because he went on rapidly, ‘It wasn’t you two, never think that. In fact, I asked your mum to come along, but by then she had the shop all set to go. And you have to understand that I never intended to stay away. It was only a short-term thing, a chance to get away, see the mother country. What d’you call it? Re …?’

‘Rejuvenate,’ I said. I sipped my wine, thinking. ‘That day when you saw Dallas – how did she seem? Like, was she scared? Nervous?’

‘Not at all. Excited, if anything.’ His voice was threaded with bitterness, even after all this time. ‘On top of the bloody world.’

‘And then she was dead.’

He flinched. ‘Yep. But it wasn’t me.’

‘You can see how it would look, though,’ put in Petra, a little maliciously. ‘You’re in love with her, she knocks you back, you’re the last person to see her alive.’

‘Apart from the killer,’ I said sharply. ‘Speaking of whom, any ideas?’

‘No. Not an inkling. And believe me, I’ve been racking my brains. The only one I could come up with was Paul himself. But apparently he’s got an alibi.’

‘Yes, he has. What about Rex Fletcher? Maybe she was having a fling with him too?’

‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically. ‘She wasn’t like that.’

Petra snorted and I shot her a frown.

‘It’s a bugger,’ he said with a sigh. He drained his glass. ‘Another round, girls?’

We both nodded and he rose with an exaggerated groan. I watched him wind his way around another table towards the pub door. I wondered what the occupants of that table would say if I leapt to my feet and informed them that this unremarkable elderly man with the avuncular smile had once been involved in serial sexual shenanigans. He disappeared inside and I turned to glare at Petra. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘What do you mean? What’s up with
you
? You of all people! Why aren’t
you
more pissed about all this?’

I gave it some thought. ‘Actually, I don’t know. I think I’m compartmentalising. I’ll drag it all out bit by bit later and deal with it. It’s easier that way.’

‘Bloody hell, Nell. They were playing partner swaps! It’s
disgusting
!’

I nodded, because she had a point. It was hard enough imagining one’s parents having sex with each other, let alone their entire circle of friends. But having already heard about the swinger angle a few days ago, perhaps deep down I had been a little more prepared. Besides, every time my mind swung towards any imagery that might accompany my father’s revelations, it veered away protectively. Maybe the wine I was consuming was helping in this regard. In which case, the question was how long I could keep it up.

*

I rang Deb on my mobile as I walked home, wanting to take something out on someone. It was almost dark now, with the setting sun leaking crimson across the horizon. She answered on the third ring and I launched immediately. Attack was the best form of defence. ‘What’s happening with my bloody street sign?’

‘Nell! Oh my, I’m
so
sorry to hear about your father!’

‘Yes, me too. Believe me. Now, what’s happening with the street sign?’

‘Oh, um, well as I said this morning, it’s a little stuck at the moment. Just give me time.’

‘I don’t have time!’ I said, a trifle melodramatically.

Her voice shot back with concern. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. I’m just sick of it.’ I stopped and turned. The offending object was now illuminated below the streetlight. Nell Forrest Close. It was ridiculous.

‘How did you go with those names the other day? Did you get what you wanted?’

‘Yes. Thanks. Actually, there’s a couple more you could check for me. To make up for the sign.’ I cast back, skimming through my conversation with Mrs Patrick the second. ‘A brother and sister, Paul and Jenny Patrick, although she may have changed her name with marriage or whatever. Grew up in Majic and then the Ballarat area. Hopefully at least one of them is still around there.’

‘Did you check the telephone directory?’

‘Ah … yes?’

‘Okay then. But I take it this can wait until tomorrow? After all, it’s past nine.’

‘If it has to,’ I said grumpily, still staring at the sign. I said my goodbyes and then continued home.

There I checked Quinn’s room. She was already asleep, lying on her side with a sheet draped artistically from her shoulder. She looked like a toga-clad Roman. Gusto glanced up sleepily from his cushion in the corner. Excellent guard dog. I closed the door gently and then wandered downstairs to stand in the middle of the kitchen. I surged with energy, bubbles of it frothing fitfully within. I had to do something, anything. I imagined this was what taking speed felt like, and wondered why anyone would ever repeat the experience. It was extremely uncomfortable.

There were no messages on the answering machine this time, or my phone, and the computer delivered no emails. There was, however, a Tupperware container full of spaghetti bolognaise sitting on the bench. I smiled, touched. After putting it away, I spent half an hour cleaning the kitchen, and then continued into the lounge room, wiping dust from every available surface except the area surrounding the photo of my mother with her grandchildren on the sideboard. I avoided that one.

I thought about spending some time with the doll’s houses, usually my modus operandi for restoring calm, but sitting still felt like an impossible task in itself. At half past ten, I found myself back in the kitchen, still buzzing. And then I realised that there was one job that really
did
need doing. I bounced upstairs and changed into a black T-shirt and leggings before collecting up the hammer, a monkey wrench and the leftovers from an ancient socket set. I stowed them in a backpack and slung it over my shoulder, sagging a little with the weight. But if a job was worth doing, then it was worth doing yourself.

‘What are you going to do about Lucy?’ asked Petra, breaking the silence as we neared the outskirts of Melbourne.

‘I’m not sure.’ I sighed softly. ‘I haven’t even really had a chance to talk to her. That Kate is still there. Did you know Scarlet offered to have the baby, raise it with hers?’

‘Typical Scarlet. Incredibly generous but not very discerning.’

I flicked a glance at my sister, impressed. ‘I do know that the advice from the lawyer wasn’t what Luce wanted to hear.’

‘Not surprised.’ Petra flicked on her indicator and passed a slow-moving semitrailer. ‘In theory, it’s only fair that the father should get first dibs if a baby’s being put up for adoption.’

‘In this case, I don’t think it’s the father getting first dibs, just his mother.’

‘Yes. And she’s an interesting piece of work.’

I nodded, leaning my head against the window. The trees had given way to industry, clusters of ungainly buildings with clouds of graffiti climbing up their walls. We had been on the road for over half an hour and so far had avoided our father’s revelations, even though they had been the impetus for this impromptu road trip. It turned out that Jennifer Patrick was indeed listed in the telephone directory. Not only that, but when I rang at nine o’clock, it was to find that her brother was currently visiting from Brisbane. That was the good news. The bad was that Jennifer lived in Healesville, which was over two hours away.

She had sounded surprised, rather understandably, but very courteous. Considering my father had just been arrested for the murder of her mother, it could have been quite different. Petra had taken a little more persuading but we had been on the road by nine-thirty, the plan being to lunch at a vineyard after meeting the Patrick offspring. I had to be back in time to collect Quinn’s textbooks from Bendigo, otherwise I would have another teenage temper tantrum on my hands. And there was a good chance anyway that this trip would prove fruitless, that they remembered little and knew even less, but it was worth a shot.

I turned back to Petra, and simply stared. It was a game I had invented when she was small, and one that had driven her to distraction. ‘Yen! Nell’s looking at me again! Make her stop!’ This complaint invariably received short shrift from our mother, who never quite recognised psychological torture, even when she herself was the instigator.

After about ten minutes, a half-smile appeared on Petra’s face. ‘I hate you. What? What is it?’

‘Are we going to tell them about … you know?’

She didn’t answer for a minute. ‘I think we should play it by ear.’

‘If we do, we’ll have to be diplomatic. Not go overboard on their father being a douche.’

‘Yes, because ours is such a shining light.’

I frowned, turning my head slightly so that she couldn’t see. I didn’t quite understand why Petra was so
angry
. It was certainly upsetting, and confronting, and more than a little disturbing, but she was behaving as if she herself had been betrayed. Perhaps it was the difference between having children and not. The tendency to see your mother as one-dimensional was something I had only fully appreciated when I had children of my own, doing it to me. Even now they expressed shock, occasionally even condemnation, whenever I stepped beyond the bounds of their perception. Then there were the frustrations of motherhood. The times, particularly during the early years, when the weariness was inside and out, dankly heavy, and all you wanted was an hour, just an hour, to be yourself again.

This inside knowledge may well have softened my reception of the news. Even so, I had decided to avoid my mother for a good few days. It might be best if Petra avoided her for some months, maybe a year. We began the long ascent of the Westgate Bridge. It was a misty, muggy morning and the ships docked along the channel were shrouded in grey.

‘Do you know what I don’t get?’ asked Petra, before immediately answering her own question. ‘If she was so miserable with our father, then what’s the big difference with Uncle Jim? Both are what you’d call simple men. And I don’t mean that in a nasty way.’

I nodded. ‘I know. But Uncle Jim is quieter, less matey. He’s also more literary, like he’ll sometimes throw in a reference to Dickens, Mark Twain, people like that. She’d like that.’

‘Do you know what I think it is?’ Petra continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s because it’s still an affair. They don’t
live
together. She doesn’t have to wash his underwear or put up with him when he’s sick or listen to him fart after sauerkraut.’

‘Why would he fart after sauerkraut? More precisely, why would anyone
eat
sauerkraut?’

‘Because it’s delicious. It’s the cabbage that does it, though. I had some yesterday.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Which reminds me, you still owe me chocolate.’

‘How about I buy you a drink instead? When we’ve worked all this out.’

‘Good plan, but make it a bottle and then I’ll share. I’m the generous type.’

We fell silent as Petra drove through the city and then merged onto the Eastern Freeway. From there it was smooth travelling and we chatted amiably about a range of subjects. Like the ease with which Scarlet was settling back into Majic, and Sally Roddom having resigned from the presidency of the Wine and Cheese Society, and the fact that Petra was becoming bored with her renovations and would like a challenge. Something different.

Maroondah Highway took us all the way to Healesville and, with little traffic, we were soon coasting down the main street. It was a picturesque town, with modernity melding beautifully with solid sandstone buildings. The hotel, edged with wrought-iron lacework, changed our mind about lunching in a nearby vineyard. Ten minutes later we turned into tree-lined road and pulled up outside a neat brick veneer with its half-closed awnings like sleepy eyelids. Two cars were in the driveway, a four-wheel drive and a small, shiny white sedan.

I grinned nervously at Petra and then took a deep breath before pressing the doorbell. It was answered almost immediately, as if Jennifer Patrick had been waiting on the other side. She was a small, slim woman, as neat as her house, with shoulder-length brown hair that glimmered with chestnut highlights.

‘You made it! Wonderful. You must be Nell.’ She shook my hand vigorously. ‘I read
all
your columns. Love your sense of humour!’

‘Thank you. And this is my sister, Petra.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ She let go of my hand to shake Petra’s. ‘I
wish
I could remember you both, but I was so little. Only about two when we left Majic. But Paul was older. He’s in the lounge room. Come in, come in.’

She shut the door behind us and then squeezed past to lead the way. Petra was in front of me and I could tell that Paul Patrick was a good-looking guy just by the way she straightened her spine. My sister was like a red pointer when it came to men. I could only hope that this one didn’t return the interest. Their engagement notice would be a killer.

‘Paul, this is Petra and Nell Forrest. My brother Paul.’

He
was
a good-looking guy, tall with curly dark hair and a tidy beard. There was a vague imprint of his father, but tidied up around the edges. He rose to shake our hands and, although he was polite, I noticed that his smile was tight.

‘Sit down.’ Jennifer waved us towards a pair of armchairs. ‘I’ll get the coffee.’

We were left facing her brother, who had sat back on the couch and crossed his long legs. The room was fairly nondescript, apart from a chocolate-brown feature wall and a beautiful bronze and burgundy abstract.

‘I understand you’re on holidays at the moment,’ said Petra, crossing her own legs and then adjusting her skirt. It was one of her favourite moves. ‘Visiting your sister.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’ He looked from her to me. ‘Listen, I don’t want to appear rude, but what exactly are you after here?’

‘Paul!’ remonstrated his sister as she returned, bearing a tray with a coffee plunger and other paraphernalia. She flushed. ‘We
went
through this!’

‘I just think it’s a bit odd.’ He rose to take the tray from her, placing it on a low table. ‘After all, your father has just been arrested for murdering our mother. That’s not your standard let’s-drop-by intro.’

‘No, it’s not.’ I decided to be straight with him. ‘We’re just trying to find out what was going on around then. There appears to have been an upheaval that involved several families. Our father went out of our lives too.’

‘Yeah, but he wasn’t prevented from coming back.’

‘Coffee?’ asked Jennifer in a high voice. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘The thing is, we don’t think he did it,’ I continued, throwing caution to the wind. ‘If it turns out that he did, well, he deserves everything he gets. But I want to be sure. And I want to know why. I would have thought that’s what you wanted too.’

He looked at me for a moment and then spoke gently. ‘I imagine it’d be difficult to be in your position. Really difficult. I’ll be honest, though: I think he did it.’ He paused again. ‘But, yeah, I’d like to find out why, and I want to be sure. Someone has to pay here.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Petra, nodding vigorously. Just as well she was ineligible for the jury.

Jennifer had filled four mugs and now she passed them out. ‘Help yourselves to milk and sugar. And there’s biscuits too, macadamia ones from the bakery. Delicious.’

‘Okay then, we’ll start with us.’ Paul set his coffee back down. ‘I was about seven when we left Majic, with Jen five years younger. I have quite strong memories of the place. Some good, some not so good.’

Petra made a sympathetic noise. I felt like backhanding her.

‘I remember you, for starters.’ He looked at me, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. His gaze drifted to my hair and I put a hand up self-consciously to smooth it. I knew I should have worn my hat. ‘You had that same boofy hair. And you used to follow me around at school. It was affecting my street cred. In the end, I made you sign a contract.’

‘Like an intervention order?’ asked Petra. ‘Clever thinking.’

‘I suspect it wouldn’t have held up in a court of law.’ His smile widened.

‘I don’t remember much I’m afraid,’ put in Jennifer. ‘Just a bit about our place.’

‘It was tiny,’ said her brother. ‘But cosy. We played outside a lot. And our mother had an amazing imagination. She would come up with these games, like wallpapering the space beside our bunks with our own pictures. Coming up with a design and then measuring it all out. Or using the nooks and crannies, and there were heaps, to arrange a treasure hunt.’

‘She sounds wonderful,’ I said softly.

‘She was.’

‘My daughter looks a lot like her.’ Jennifer jumped up to fetch a photo from the sideboard. She passed it to me. A blonde girl in her late teens, early twenties, beamed from the frame, her blue eyes alight.

‘She’s gorgeous.’

‘Lauren,’ said her mother, passing the photo across to Petra. ‘Lauren Parker. I went back to my maiden name after my divorce. D’you know, I would have named her after our mother if I’d known … but we all thought she’d run away. Deserted us.’

Paul was nodding, the smile gone. ‘And that’s the worst of this. All these years thinking she’d never bothered to make contact. When she really …’

‘Yes.’ The silence hung, awkward and accusatory. I sipped my coffee to avoid eye contact.

‘She left a note, you know,’ said Jennifer. ‘Dad destroyed it but Margie told us what it said when we were older.’ Her voice changed as she recited from memory. ‘
I am so very sorry but I can’t do this any more. Please know that I tried. But I must start being true to myself, and to the one that I love. Dallas.
’

‘That sounds like it’s written to your father,’ said Petra. ‘Which does suggest she expected to see you both again.’

‘Yes,’ said Jennifer. ‘Though we didn’t know about the note for years.’

I thought about Paul Patrick Senior, and his almost viscous bitterness. ‘I met your father last week.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Paul shortly.

Jennifer’s eyes flicked from him to me. ‘Paul doesn’t get along well with Dad. They clash.’

‘Margie seemed nice, though,’ I added.

‘And that “though” says it all,’ said Paul grimly. ‘Let’s be frank here. Our father is a selfish bastard who made our lives miserable after … Mum. He may have had good reason to feel bitter, with her leaving him like that, but he never lost a chance to badmouth her. He destroyed all the photos, forbade any mention of her name, but still managed to bring her up at least once a day. It’d be “that bitch”, “your slut of a mother”, whatever.’

‘Margie
is
nice, though,’ said Jennifer in her high voice. ‘She tried
really
hard.’

Paul nodded slowly. ‘And he put her through some crap too, let me tell you. Stuff that’d melt your socks.’

‘Like what?’ asked Petra. She flicked me a quick glance, raising one eyebrow.

‘Like you wouldn’t believe. Trust me. But if you’re thinking that he killed her, then I’m sorry. He’s an arsehole, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Iron-clad alibi.’

I cradled my coffee tightly. ‘Do you remember that day?’

‘Yes. Anzac Day. They’d had an argument the night before and she suddenly says she’s not going to the march after all. I wanted to stay with her, because I knew she was upset, but I really wanted to go too.’ His lips thinned and I suddenly realised that the guilt over this decision had stayed with him for years. ‘Anyway, we get back and she’s gone. Along with the car and a suitcase full of stuff. And that was that.’

‘So … he was with you all day?’

‘Unfortunately, yes. Even if I remember wrong, which I don’t, there were other people in the group. Margie, the Laceys, a few others. The police have already spoken to all the ones still alive and they say the same thing. He never left, not till we went home.’

‘Your mother used to babysit us,’ said Jennifer abruptly. ‘Dad told me. How’s she taking all this?’