Promise (25 page)

The air above the trees on the hills seemed to shimmer with the heat or oils released by the eucalypts, and Anna had the sense of the forest around them as a purposeful, self-contained world. She didn’t imagine that the trees had intelligence – she was not so romantic – but she knew that the forest had evolved to survive, and it had survived despite the best efforts of people to destroy it. All life was programmed to do whatever was necessary to survive: Charlie had crawled through the fence to Anna’s place, and Anna had learnt to shut down her longing for her mother.

Had Anna overridden some instinct for her own survival to rescue Charlie? Or had taking Charlie really been about Anna’s survival, too?

•

Later in the morning, Macky collected sticks and built a fire on a shady patch of sand. When the fire was burning brightly, he retrieved something from a hollowed-out tree trunk and passed it to Anna. It was a jaffle iron in a plastic bag.

‘Have you made jaffles before?’ he asked.

‘Not on a fire.’

‘I think it’s best to wait until there are coals,’ he said, and returned to Charlie where she pottered in the sandy shallows, building a dam wall with rocks.

Macky seemed intent on crafting an experience for them: turning up after breakfast, and telling Anna to pack bread and cheese before leading them down to the creek. Was it something his mother had asked him to do or was he just a thoughtful boy? He was the perfect balm for Charlie: attentive and at ease in nature. Who would Charlie be now if she’d been born to Beatie? Five years of neglect and abuse must wring something out of a child, and skew their natural potential. Anna despised the hippy bullshit she’d heard from some of Pat’s friends years ago, that children were always born to the right family. That same lazy thinking would conclude that Anna was meant to lose her mother when she was eight.

Anna poked at the coals and wondered who she might have been if her mother hadn’t died. How had she changed to accommodate her mother’s absence, and – perhaps more importantly – the way her father dealt with her mother’s death?

Don’t sit on the bed, it will hurt your mother
. He’d sounded so angry.

He’d been making a set of shelves in the garage the day she realised she must never mention her mother again. She’d stood by his workbench, watching him, alert for the moment he might be distracted enough to let down his guard.

He squirted white glue onto a joint and tapped in a nail.

‘Was it in the day when I saw Mummy the last time?’

He didn’t look at her, but tapped in another nail then unwound the clamp and slid the half-made shelves out.

When he spoke, his voice shook and came out in a strange, breathy way. ‘Anna, you have to stop asking me.’

‘But was it daytime?’

He slammed the shelves onto the cement floor, where they smashed apart. She stumbled backwards, and banged into the bench.

‘For fuck’s sake, just STOP,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Through tear-blurred eyes she watched him walk out and disappear down the driveway. After a while she tried to put the shelves back together but the wood was splintered. She went inside and sat in her room until he turned up late afternoon. She knew she’d broken some rule that she’d never understand and that no one would explain.

She made three cheese-and-tomato jaffles and stacked them on a big dried leaf.

‘Lunch is ready!’ she called.

Charlie ran to Anna, dripping. ‘I’m so hungry!’

The girl sat on the sandy ground and blew on her jaffle. Her nose and cheeks were pink. Anna remembered her sunburnt shoulders the first day they met. The skin on her shoulders was still rough.

‘I think you should put your t-shirt on so you don’t get sunburnt, Charlie. I don’t have any sunscreen.’

Charlie spoke through a mouthful of food. ‘Then Macky has to put his on too.’

‘But his skin is used to the sun.’

Macky looked down at his narrow chest. ‘I don’t even have a t-shirt with me!’ He smiled at Anna.

‘I won’t.’ Charlie glared at Anna. ‘I want another jaffle.’

‘You can have this.’ Anna passed Charlie hers. ‘I’ll make another one.’

She flipped the jaffle iron in the coals. ‘You do look a bit pink, Charlie. Better wear your t-shirt.’

Charlie’s voice was sullen. ‘I won’t.’ She jammed a finger into the sand. ‘And you can’t make me. You’re not my boss.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Anna.

That’s enough, Charlie
, she wanted to say, afraid the next thing the girl said would be, ‘You’re not my mother’.

She frowned at the girl.
Don’t say it
.

She knew it was unfair to ask Charlie to pretend, but Pat was right, it was just that kind of slip-up that might lead to their capture. She should go and see Beatie and ask her to keep it quiet that she knew Anna and Charlie were at the cottage.

Anna pulled the jaffle iron from the fire. She could feel Macky watching to see what she said next. She flipped open the iron and pretended to concentrate on getting her jaffle out.

‘You can’t make me wear a t-shirt,’ muttered Charlie and gouged at the sand with her finger.

Macky finished eating and stood up. ‘I have to go. I have to help Dad fix the chook house.’ He unzipped his backpack. ‘This is for you,’ he said and passed Charlie a book.

‘What is it?’

‘A book.’

He turned to Anna. ‘Can you please put the jaffle iron back in the tree?’

She nodded.

‘Bye.’ He headed upriver and disappeared into the trees.

Charlie watched him go, then examined the book. It had a watercolour painting of a mermaid on the front, and Anna guessed he got it from Claudy.

After Anna ate her jaffle, she said, ‘Time for us to go too.’

The air felt flat after their tetchy exchange, and after Macky’s departure. Even the creek sounded less friendly. She put out the fire while Charlie leafed through the book, then they headed up the hill.

She hoped Pat would bring them food today. It had been two days, and she had used the last of the bread, milk and cheese. She could go down to his house but she guessed that Sabine would rather not see her.

They climbed the hill, and Anna felt like she had to force her way through the thick, humid air. Sweat ran down her face, which had the hot, swollen feeling of too much sun. She was afraid she’d lose the path and stopped a few times to figure out which fork to take.

Charlie dropped onto the path, the book in one hand. ‘I can’t walk anymore.’

Anna took the book and squatted so the girl could climb onto her back. Then she set off again, leaning forward, one slow step after another. Charlie’s hot body pressed against Anna’s back, and her wiry arms gripped Anna’s shoulders. The humid heat was like a drug. Anna felt dizzy, intoxicated. A fly buzzed around them, and the sweat dripped from her chin. Charlie gripped Anna tightly and turned her head to rest it on Anna’s shoulder.

M
acky didn’t come the next day. Charlie begged Anna to take her down the creek, so they followed the path down the hill, and found Macky and his brother and sister already there, lying back in the rushing water, hair plastered to their heads, grinning to the sky. They drew Charlie into a game of leaping from boulder to boulder, with complicated rules about when they could jump and how many people could be on each boulder.

Anna sat on the bank in the shade, and watched Charlie standing tall on a boulder, skinny legs planted wide, t-shirt plastered to her belly, her face expectant while she waited for the other kids to move into some particular constellation. She seemed to have none of her old watchfulness, but Anna wondered if Charlie had really let down her guard.

Charlie called out, ‘One, two, three . . .’

The hopeful, joyous note in her voice stilled Anna, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe to think that this small person trusted her and relied on her. Was it possible that Charlie had sought her out, that she somehow sensed what lengths Anna would go to in order to help her?

‘. . . seven, eight, ten!’ called Charlie. The other kids leapt, like frogs, onto Charlie’s boulder. Claudy slipped off into the thigh-deep water and grabbed at her knee, wailing. The other kids more or less ignored her, and Anna started wading towards Claudy but the girl heaved herself up and carried on, tears over.

•

Their days down at the creek took on a lazy, hypnotic quality. Anna’s job was cooking jaffles for everyone’s lunch, using ingredients the kids brought with them in Macky’s daypack: cherry tomatoes, the biggest basil leaves she’d ever seen, leftover bolognese sauce. After eating, they lounged around under the trees and played I Spy, while Anna sketched the kids in her notebook. There was no talk of the outside world, no talk of Beatie or any grown-ups at all, but Anna knew that this idyll would end soon.

Enjoy this while you can
, she wanted to say to Charlie. She’d decided not to talk to Beatie, and just to lie low; their month at the cottage would be up in less than three weeks anyway. Then Anna would sit Charlie down and talk her through what was coming. She would call the police from the phone box in town and ask them to meet her at the unstaffed Mullumbimby station. She’d beg them to make the handover calm and low-key.

She and Charlie walked back to the cottage at dusk each day, smelling of woodsmoke and creek water, the frogs chirping around them as the air cooled. Pat delivered their supplies in the daytime, while they were at the creek, and they never saw him. Anna always left him a note to say they were out exploring. If Beatie had told Pat and he wanted to talk to Anna about it, then she guessed that he’d leave her a message. As it was, he just drew smiley faces at the bottom of Anna’s note, and one day left two small wooden dolls, each one wearing a tiny pink cape.

•

Avril’s two kids turned up one day: a girl a bit older than Charlie – the one who’d donated her clothes – and a girl close to Macky’s age. They said a cursory hello to Anna, and treated Charlie as if she’d always been there. They’d brought a li-lo with them and spent half an hour sitting on the bank blowing it up, then the kids took turns to leap off the bridge and ride the li-lo down what they called the rapids. Anna stood in the shallows watching Charlie ride the white water, ready to wade out and grab her. Charlie hung on tight, squealing as the li-lo bumped and bucked, then she tipped off into the water close to the big pool. She stood up in the waist-deep water, and grinned at the kids who stood on the bridge, cheering.

Anna knew she was all but invisible to the children while they played. Watching their intense engagement with life reminded her that their lives would go on and – hopefully – flourish, while Anna’s life might well unravel. She simply didn’t allow her mind to travel beyond handing Charlie over to the police.

A
fter breakfast pikelets, Anna sat on the step with a cup of tea and watched Charlie where she crouched on the pavers, painstakingly arranging little black berries and mottled leaves into a circle. The girl disappeared up the side of the house and returned with clumps of fern-like moss which she teased apart and laid in wisps between each leaf.

To the north sat a bank of dark clouds. Anna hoped that any rain would not be too heavy; a week ago she’d planted a few rows of basil and lettuce and cucumber seeds in the veggie bed, and already there were little green seedlings. She’d found well-matured compost in an old compost heap near the water tank, and made stick tripods to train the cucumber vines up. Even though they wouldn’t be around to harvest the veggies, she liked the feeling of having plants to tend again. The trees of the forest didn’t need her, not even the forlorn seedling tree growing in the bricks right by the back door.

Charlie sat back on her heels, a piece of moss in her hand, and looked down the clearing. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’ said Anna.

‘Someone. A man.’

Anna’s heart juddered. The police? Was this it? She stood and took a step towards Charlie. She needed time to explain what would happen. Then she heard Pat’s distant voice and saw him striding up through the clearing. As he got close, he called to her, ‘Your dad phoned.’

‘What? Dad?’ How the hell did he know she was there?

Charlie gazed at Anna, a worried look on her face.

Pat reached them and leant forward, his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. ‘He’s calling back in twenty minutes.’ He straightened up. ‘Did you tell him you were here?’

‘No. Definitely not!’

‘How did he know you were here, then?’ He frowned. ‘You must have said something?’

‘No. Nothing. What did he say?’

‘He just asked to talk to you.’ Pat crossed to the tap for a drink.

Charlie laid the moss on the ground and stood up. ‘Is it okay, Anna?’

Anna nodded. ‘I think so. Let’s go down to Pat’s. Grab your shoes.’ Could something be wrong with her dad? Or was he warning her that the police knew where she was? Or that he’d told the police where she was?

The three of them hurried down the hill, Charlie trotting to keep up. Anna slipped on leaves and had to call out to Pat, ‘Slow down a bit or I’m going to break a leg.’ A terrible feeling of dread built in her chest.

At Pat’s place, Sabine hung washing on the line next to the laundry. Her belly looked much bigger. Charlie ran to Sabine and grabbed her around the legs.

‘Come in,’ said Pat. ‘I’ll make you a cuppa. Do you want coffee?’

‘I’d love a coffee.’ A cane baby bassinet sat on the bench outside the kitchen.

He put the kettle on the stove and brought the phone out from the bedroom. Anna sat at the table and watched him spoon coffee into the glass plunger.

‘What time will he call back?’

Pat glanced at his watch. ‘In a few minutes. He said he couldn’t call back later.’

At the clothesline, Sabine passed dried washing down to Charlie, who carefully placed each big white square into the basket. Nappies.

Pat poured hot water into the plunger and put a mug on the table in front of Anna. ‘I should have said you weren’t here, but he caught me off guard.’

‘But how did he know? I don’t get it.’