Please Don't Leave Me Here (5 page)

‘OK. I'll just get my jacket and tell …' Her face is burning as she looks at her feet. ‘… I'll tell Sam, and come straight over.'

She closes the door, turns, and bumps into Aidan in the hallway. She asks if he can stay with the twins. He nods and hands her her jacket.

Kitty's wrapped in a blanket on Kerry's front porch. Brigitte trips up the step. She wasn't expecting to see blood. But he'll be OK, she tells herself.

When she was five, her father had
carried their old blue heeler back to the parking bay from the place where he'd been run over on the highway. Digger's tongue was hanging out, his collar missing, blood all around his mouth. While they'd slept, he'd chewed through his lead that had been tied to the truck. Dan had wrapped him in a blanket, trying to hide the damage, but Brigitte saw his guts hanging out, dripping. Ryan started crying. She asked Dan if Digger would be OK. He didn't answer. She felt like she couldn't breathe, and vomit was rising in her throat. It was the first time she'd seen anything dead. Joan just sat there, smoking, in the red-and-white Kenworth cabin, and watched as Brigitte and Ryan helped Dan dig a hole for Digger just beyond the parking bay.

‘Come and say goodbye to Digger,' Ryan called out.

‘No.' Joan screwed up her face. ‘I can't stand endings. I only like beginnings.' She flicked her cigarette butt onto the gravel and pulled the door of the Kenworth shut,
Dan Weaver
painted in swirly writing along its side. She said the same thing when she refused to go to Dan's gravesite at his funeral.

‘Kitty needs to go to the vet
now
,' Kerry says.

‘Yes.'

‘I'll drive you?'

Brigitte nods and hears herself swallow. Kerry picks Kitty up carefully and passes him to Brigitte. Brigitte's hands shake; she's afraid of holding him in case she hurts him more.

Kitty pants fast, watery little breaths on Brigitte's lap — as if his lungs are filled with blood. She winces at his gurgled meows when they hit speed humps.

Kerry parks in front of a grey double-fronted house. A rusted sign hangs from a post:
V — ary Surgeon
.

Brigitte follows Kerry down the dark sideway to the surgery at the back. Moonlight illuminates the little white flowers pushing up through cracks in the concrete. Brigitte always takes Kitty for his check-ups and needles to the shiny, new clinic in North Fitzroy, but it's not open after hours.

The vet asks Brigitte if it's her cat.

She nods.

He runs his big hands over Kitty. ‘It's got significant head and spinal injuries. Needs to be euthanased.'

Kitty squirms around on the stainless-steel table. Blood covers most of his head, and Brigitte sees that one of his eyes is missing. She wants to stroke him or hold him, but the vet tells her to keep back. The sterile, disinfectant smells — hospital smells — make her dizzy.
Please, please, just do it quickly
.

‘Shouldn't have been out at night,' the vet says.

Brigitte leans her back against the cold wall, and tears fill her eyes.

The vet asks her to pay first.
Prick
. She searches for her credit card in her purse, but can't find it. Her legs feel like jelly, and the clinic spins. Kerry organises payment while Brigitte sits shaking in the waiting area. Had she been a cat the day of the accident, they would have put her to sleep, too.

Kerry gets a clean blanket from her car. A yellow one.

‘Do you have any other colour blankets?' Brigitte says.

Kerry frowns.

‘Sorry. It's fine. Thanks.'

‘You have something in your hair.'

Brigitte brushes her fingers through it.

Kerry helps her wrap up Kitty, and drives her home.

Brigitte walks through the quiet house, carrying a cold, heavier Kitty wrapped in the blanket
.
Aidan has cleaned up the cake, but left the spilt wine on the table — it's the same colour as the big round stain on the road where Kitty used up his ninth life. She frowns at the cigarette butts in a saucer on the kitchen bench.

He's in the backyard wearing a black trench coat. The shovel leans against the plastic cubby house. Brigitte kneels, and places Kitty in the hole he's dug in the garden.

Aidan waits a couple of minutes before clearing his throat. He reaches out a hand to help her, but she pulls herself up on the cubby house. He dumps a shovel-full of dirt onto Kitty's grave and smoothes it over with the blade. Brigitte shivers and pulls her jacket tighter around her shoulders. She looks up, and can only see one star in the sky.

‘Will you get another kitten for the kids? Or wait a while?' Aidan says, leaning on the shovel.

‘Don't know.' She wipes the tears from her cheeks. ‘Maybe a female wouldn't wander as much. We could make it an inside cat. I'd like another ginger one.'

‘Thought ginger cats could only be males.' His breath is a swirl of steam in the air.

‘That's an old wives' tale. Females have two X chromosomes, so they need two copies of the ginger variant, instead of one like males. Less common, but you can still get them.'

‘Not just a pretty face.' Aidan stands the shovel against the fence. ‘You've got cake in your hair,' he says, with the hint of a smirk on one side of his lips. He brushes it off and tries to kiss her, but she turns her face away and tells him to please go.

He goes to the bungalow.

Inside the house, she locks the back door and has to lean against it as her knees buckle.

No, no, no
. She shakes her head.
What have I done?
She covers her mouth with her hands. She'll never be able to look Sam in the eyes again.

She makes it to the bathroom, turns on the taps, kneels, and vomits red wine and purple cake in the shower. When the last of her stomach contents gurgles down the plug hole, she washes her body thoroughly — inside and out. She brushes her teeth, shampoos her hair, and scrubs frantically with the bristle brush every centimetre of skin until it is red and sore.

Through the window she can see torchlight in the bungalow. Is he doing the same? Washing away every trace of evidence?

She catches her naked, dripping reflection in the mirror as she dries herself.
We all have our reasons, our circumstances
: Joan's voice in her head.

She winds Kitty's window shut and locks it.

In the bedroom, little sobs rise from her abdomen and shake her whole body as she pulls on her least-sexy night shirt (the black one with the sleepy cow) and a pair of old track pants. She balls herself into a tight knot of pain at the edge of the bed, and waits for sleep, which takes a long time. Sirens scream up and down Hoddle Street, trains blast and rattle through the station, cars slow for the speed hump in front of the house — some don't decelerate and hit it at 60. A cat meows like a crying baby, and rain starts dripping.

The serpent tattoo on his back breathes as he breathes; blue-and-green scales rise and fall with every inhalation and exhalation. She reaches out to touch it, but it slithers away as he rolls over and curls into a foetal position. Soft light, a silver mist on his dirty-blond hair. Sam? It's not Sam. But somebody familiar. It's … Kurt Cobain.

A dream within a dream. She wakes and dozes, and he's gone. A curtain flaps across an open window. Shoes? Where are her shoes? Not on the floor. Not under the bed. She hurtles barefoot — staggers, falls, twists her knee — down a long, airless corridor. She has to find him.

He's standing at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. She climbs towards him. In one hand he holds a red dog collar, and in the other, something metal — dark, heavy, shaped like an iron.

Then she's running — clutching a yellow bunny rug — down the stairs, out the door. She slips in a pool of blood on the road. A siren howls. Somebody screams — until she is wrenched from sleep by the image of the button on the floor under the table.

6

‘Kitty's not dead, Mummy,' Phoebe says.

‘Yes, sweetie, he is.' Brigitte presses down the dirt around Kitty's plant with her fingers. It's a little bush the twins chose at the nursery for its orange flowers — the same colour as Kitty — and heart-shaped leaves that mean they loved him.

‘No, him sleeping.'

‘Well, dead is kind of like sleeping,' Kerry says. ‘But you don't wake up.'

‘Him sleeping on my bed last night,' Phoebe says.

‘No. He's sleeping under the ground now.' Brigitte stands and straightens her back, feeling a twist of pain.

‘Yes, him
was
on my bed last night.'

‘No, he wasn't.'

‘Yes, Mummy.'

‘Stop it, Phoebe.'

‘You stop it, Mummy.' Phoebe runs inside and slams the door behind her.

‘Can we get a puppy now?' Finn asks.

Brigitte and Kerry sit on the old love seat on the back porch. It was a wedding gift from Sam's parents. Now the blue paint on the arms is faded, and the floral cushions are torn; it's ready to go out in the next hard-rubbish collection.

Kerry opens the cheese and crackers and the bottle of wine she brought for the wake. She pours the wine, and they raise their glasses to Kitty.

‘How was the cake?' Kerry asks.

‘Good. Thanks.' Brigitte nods while her stomach churns.

‘What's with all the furniture against the fence?'

‘It's out of the bungalow. Somebody's renting it.'

‘Who?' Kerry squints at the sun.

‘Dunno. Just some guy Sam knows — a cop.' Brigitte takes a cracker, and slices some cheese.

‘What's he like?'

Brigitte shrugs, pretending to concentrate on her cracker and cheese.

‘Young?' Kerry balances her glass between her knees while she rolls a joint.

‘No. About my age.'

‘That's young. Cute?'

‘Haven't taken that much notice.' She takes a big sip of wine, and feels like vomiting again.

‘You have! You're blushing, Brigitte.'

‘Am not. It's just the wine.'

‘Oh my God.' Kerry laughs, blows smoke through her nose, and passes the joint to Brigitte.

‘Don't be stupid.'

‘You know that's why Tony and I broke up?'

‘Why?'

‘The boarder.'

‘You didn't?'

Kerry nods, mock-sadly, and pours more wine.

7

A pistol-grey sky threatens rain most of the way along the Eastern Freeway. It holds off until they turn onto the Gippsland Highway. Then it pours. Sam turns the wipers on full. The station wagon's windows fog up, and it's hard to see the road. The twins eat rice cakes, chatter, and fall asleep in their child restraints. Brigitte feigns sleep to avoid talking to Sam.

The rain stops as they drive into Paynesville. They queue for the chain ferry at the water's edge. It's the only way to access Raymond Island, in the middle of a saltwater-lake system that feeds from Bass Strait. Moored fishing boats, cruisers — all different shapes and sizes — bob on the olive-green water. The ferry operator waves them on and collects the fare.

The vehicle section is half-full with seven other cars on board. A local, with curly grey hair, wheels her tricycle on, with an I HEART THE R.I FERRY bumper sticker decorating the basket. Two more seniors shuffle into the pedestrian shelter, clutching string bags of groceries from the Paynesville supermarket. A couple read a tourist brochure —
koala sanctuary
printed on the cover — while their child pushes his nose against the glass and makes faces at the twins.

The hydraulic ramps at either end groan as they're raised. Brigitte catches a whiff of diesel as the submerged chains engage and start to haul the ferry across the 150-metre strait. Sam checks his phone messages; something's up, but he doesn't say what. Finn and Phoebe unbuckle their seatbelts, and squeal and jump around in the back of the car. Sam yells at them to sit back down in their seats. The ferry wobbles as it juts and aligns with the concrete slip on the island.

They drive past the park and community centre, and turn left into Sixth Avenue. A Blue-tongue Lizard slinks across the road. Sam beeps the horn and shouts at it to hurry up. Brigitte glares at him. ‘We're not in a hurry.'

‘Sorry.' He drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he waits for it to cross.

‘Remember the first time you and I came down here?' It was their first dirty weekend. Not that it was that dirty — she hadn't been out of hospital long, and was still fragile, almost a year after the accident. Sam doted on her then: cooked for her, brought her breakfast in bed, massaged her back and legs when she was in pain. She did really love Sam once. Still loves him, she reassures herself. Nothing has changed. She puts a hand on his thigh.

He's distracted.