Sunlit Shadow Dance (36 page)

George was on a tour of duty in the Middle
East, providing support and intelligence in Iraq at a time when
information emerged about a child pornography ring. His name was
linked to it, nothing definite, but he was sought by the police to
interview. The contact was only with a senior officer, so he should
not have known of the police arranging an investigator to go to
Iraq to meet him. But it seemed he was tipped off.

O
ne day he had not come to work. All
inquiries had since found no trace of him. He was skilled in
working and operating in this environment. Perhaps he heard
something and went underground. All that was officially known was
he could not be located without any specific fears for his
safety.

Four years was a long time, so it was hard
to know what to make of it. It was particularly hard for Cathy’s
mother. He was the younger brother and she did not know of what he
had done to her daughters. Now he was missing too it was like she
had lost one daughter, then another and now a brother. But Cathy
was now the daughter who had returned. With Susan’s permission she
would no longer live a lie.

Before the meeting was done
Susan found herself
offering to come with Cathy while she told her parents what
had passed. Cathy was determined it must come out; she had moved
past secrets and the harm they caused.

So that afternoon it was just Susan and
Cathy who sat in another Scottish living room as they told a story,
a story that no-one wanted to hear.

Mark and Jacob collected the children and
drove in the countryside. David had taken a real shine to Jacob and
sat on his shoulders as they walked in in the woods and hills
around the villages they visited, Annie was happy to have Vic’s
undivided attention. As they walked the men talked, sharing
childhood tales, the boy who was mostly black and grew up in a
rough London neighborhood, but fed his imagination on his mother’s
Caribbean tales, and the other boy who was similarly black and grew
up in a rough town camp in the middle of Australia, but was dragged
into being something better by a sister with high expectations. By
the end of the day they were fast friends. Each loved a woman who
was alike, a survivor of something awful; the women could comfort
each other in a way of sisters. So they must be like the brothers,
and they felt like brothers. It seemed right.

They returned as the winter sun was setting
to a somber living room, tears had been cried, but there was
forgiveness and the relief of knowing.

Cathy, having got her story
out, decided i
t did not need to be spoken of further. She had been
reconciled, only a vanished man remained. Grief must be endured as
the family faced the truth. So all agreed the story would end here,
unless the man was found.

Vic felt it was better that
way
; Cathy’s
family had more than enough to deal with without having the story
of such a man told outside their family circle, though his
unexplained absence made full closure impossible.

Vic and Susan spent most
of
the next
two days with Jacob and Cathy. By the end of that time a fast
friendship between all had formed.

Jacob
took Susan aside, before leaving,
saying, “I cannot believe what I wrote about you. It is so untrue.
I had blinkers on my eyes. I was so angry that you dared to
challenge the world, not bowing to its power. I confused that
courage with mockery. Now I see what you were doing was refusing to
give in to awfulness. It is good you do not remember that time. I
would rather you never read what I wrote about you
then.”

Susan said, “We did not know each other
then, now we are friends. As I do not remember, it does not hurt
me. So I will never read it.”

Then they were gone, returning
to London to talk again to the English Police
, then on to Australia via the
Middle East, for one last attempt to find the Uncle who had
remained elusive until now.

It was strange how, despite
both
Jacob
and Cathy being UK citizens, they decided to spend their lives in
Australia, at least for now. Both said it felt like home, it where
they had found each other and a wholesome new life. Even if Cathy
never found her Uncle and Jacob never published any parts of this
story, they had reached joint acceptance. Now their lives had moved
on

Vic felt a pang of regret that
it was not
him and Susan on the plane returning to his home. As winter
ground slowly forward in Scotland he really missed his Australian
life, particularly the endless bright sunlight.

As Susan said goodbye
she felt amazed at
how far their lives had moved on it the last six months. For her
their past life in Australia now seemed like a barely remembered
shadow. She did not miss it. She was less sure if Vic felt that
way. She wondered if she was a selfish burden on him, trapping him
in this place with her family and offering little in return for
what he had left behind. Still, at least he was flying helicopters
again.

Over the month that followed
Susan made herself know the full story of that
missing year. She listened to
the tapes of her own voice telling it which Anne had sent her, she
watched the documentaries of the Lost Girls Series and she listened
to it as well hearing the same stories from Vic, making him recount
all he had seen and done. But it was only knowledge not memory. It
seemed like it had happened to another person, someone unrelated to
who she was now. No new memories of then broke through whatever
block had sealed her mind.

A week before Christmas she got
another letter from Anne
. It was a wedding invitation, this time for her
to take the bridesmaid role. It was to be after Easter in Reading,
four months from now, when the spring days were growing long and
all the flowers were out.

David and his family would cross the world
for the wedding. Susan found herself thrilled with the idea of this
occasion, she would chatter to Vic about it, asking for his advice
about the various arrangements that she had offered to help Anne,
with. Vic was of little help, saying to ask her mother, that his
part in his own wedding of turning up and being dressed, was the
limit of what he could manage. Susan did not push it, liking this
new challenge.

Three more wedding invitations
turned up
at
the end of that week; three weddings in one, for the end of May.
All were to be held in Darwin on the same day. They were for Alan
and Sandy, Cathy and Jacob, and for Ross to a person named Beck.
Vic knew of Beck’s role in arranging Susan’s pardon.

Neither Vic
nor Susan had met Beck but both
liked Ross Sangster. His opinion, after all, allowed Susan to go
free. So, while he was little more than a face to them, they
thought well of him. Now he was a friend of others they knew, they
figured that soon he and Beck would be their good friends too. It
seemed strange to have decided to have three weddings all on the
one day in Darwin, but it would make it easier for them to attend
them all.

So they booked their flights to
return to Australia from the middle of May to the middle of June,
flying from London to Darwin for the weddings, then a week in Alice
Springs
with
Vic’s family, then a week in Sydney with David, Anne and Susan’s
cousins and then a final week of holiday time in Cairns before they
returned to Scotland.

They had never discussed a
future beyond this place
. It seemed Scotland had become their new home,
Vic’s flying career had risen with the publicity and the money was
good. Susan’s life was full with her children, the book translation
pages arriving from the Kashmiri book and helping around the farm.
So, for now, they both accepted they would return here.

They were even making plans to
have another baby
around the end of the year, God willing. A gap of a year
seemed right. Of course it was up to Susan to fall pregnant, but
that happened with ease before, no reason to believe it would be
different this time. So Susan would stop breastfeeding in March in
the hope of a New Year baby. With luck it would be a little sister
for Annie which she knew Vic would love.

It was a white Christmas that
year, all the hills around covered with
snow. Susan’s parents, along with
other cousins, came up and it was a day of great excitement,
particularly for David and Anne for whom it was their first
remembered Christmas. They were spoilt rotten with so many presents
from so many relatives. In the afternoon the men found toboggans in
the shed and took turns racing each other down snowy hillsides,
with children on board.

In the
New Year life settled back into a
quiet routine, periods of three or four days when Vic was gone and
two day home periods when they spent most time together.

They read part of the diary
each night and discuss
ed what it meant. They were half way through, but
had read the later bits about Susan early on, as part of her
knowing her past. It felt like embarking on a joint voyage of
discovery, reading a two page part each night and discussing what
it meant before sleep.

They were reading about J or
Josie as Vic though
t her to be. She had just arrived in Katherine and Mark had
taken her in, describing his feelings for her like those for a
little kid sister, but it was clear she was looking for more than
that from him. By the end of this night of reading, Josie had found
her way into his bed. They both felt secretly pleased for this
comfort Josie had given Mark, his life had been very dark and empty
since Belle was gone.

They drifted into a dreamy sleep as they put
the book aside, bodies not quite touching but with connections
between hands and feet.

Vic awoke to hear Susan call
out. At first he thought something had happened, perhaps to one of
the children and
that she was summonsing him to wake. But he saw she was
sleeping still. He watched her for a moment. Her face was reflected
in the soft light behind little Vic’s crib that allowed them to
find their baby in the dark.

Suddenly Susan
sat bolt upright in
the bed, waving her arms, saying “Please, please, don’t let it end
like this. I will stay with you on any terms. We can make a new
life together in a place where we know nobody. I love you. I will
never tell what you have done.”

She held out her arms
imploringly
,
desperation in her face, pleading. Then it seemed as if she had
been struck an invisible blow, she recoiled and, as if rejected
turned her face away, softly crying, lying on her side.

Vic wanted to put his arms
around her to comfort her. But he knew in this dream she was
sharing life with another man, living out
a private agony of that ending. He
did not feel entitled to share that. He had heard the story before,
told with her voice on the tape, the story of her final night with
Mark, how she implored him to stay, yet he had turned his face
away.

In the
morning
,
when she awoke, he asked her if she remembered any dreams of the
night before. She shook her head, puzzled, and said. “No, maybe I
dreamt of colors and sunshine.”

The next night he awoke to her
dreams again. This
time he found her pacing the room, as if in a trance,
talking to a person he could not see.

Vic said her
name
,
“Susan.”

She did not seem to hear him,
continuing
with her conversation. Then she put up her arms and started
to move and sway in a rhythmic pattern. He realized she must be
dancing, moving in time with a hidden body. It felt both private
and weird. As it went on he was consumed by jealousy. Eventually
she came and sat on the bed, dance and conversation over. He eased
her under the covers, tucked them around her and she settled back
to apparent sleep.

Again
, next day, she said she remembered
nothing.

The next night he was gone,
so
before he
left he asked her aunt to check on Susan in the middle of the
night, lest she sleepwalk, saying he had found her sleepwalking the
night before but she remembered nothing of it.

When he
rang and asked about Susan the
next day her aunt said she had been sleeping soundly when she
checked. But that morning Susan had told her of having a dream full
of colors, she could not remember what happened; the colors were
all she could remember.

When
Vic returned after his three days of
flying Susan had a tired and drawn look to her face. Her aunt said
she had been irritable for the last two days which was very unlike
her, normally so calm and sweet.

The
next day he brought her walking into the hills with him. It was
late afternoon, the sky alive with streamers of cloud in the flat
slanting winter light. He was entranced by the beauty of these
streamers of gold and other fiery colors. He held Susan in front of
him, arms wrapped around her, body pressed to his. He asked whether
she saw it too, the glowing light and color.