Am I Right or Am I Right? (12 page)

Waterworld was awesome. It was huge, stretching out over acres against the backdrop of the sea. From the entrance it seemed to go on forever, as if there was no boundary between the main pool and the limitless ocean. There wasn’t just one pool, either. There were four. One was a regular lap pool, with people relentlessly swimming back and forth. There was another place for small kids, with a fountain and all kinds of play equipment. Then there was a huge, circular pool with a spa where families were hanging out, splashing around, and duck-diving. It was the fourth pool that attracted our attention most, however. It was the biggest of the lot and it had diving boards, water chutes, slides, and big corkscrew slippery dips that started way up in the heavens and flung you, screaming and yelling, into a froth of bubbles at the deep end. The three of us didn’t have to say anything. We knew where we would be spending the rest of the afternoon.

Nessa and I got changed, took a quick shower in our suits, and headed toward the slides. Jason emerged from the men’s changing rooms a minute later. I was relieved he wasn’t wearing a Speedo. I can’t stand Speedos. It’s almost impossible to keep your eyes off them, even—especially—when you can’t bear to look. If you want my opinion, Mother Nature demonstrated a fine sense of the absurd when she designed that portion of the male anatomy.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t averse to checking out his general physique, though this wasn’t as easy as it might sound. I mean, you can’t say something like,
Hang on, Jason. Take a few steps back while I scan your body for imperfections.
You have to stare into someone’s eyes while at the same time trying to check out the rest of their body without them noticing. I suppose you could pretend you’d just seen a UFO and, while he’s peering into the sky and shielding his eyes with his hands, have a damn good perv. But this seemed lacking in finesse to me, so I waited until he swept his gaze around the pool.

It was worth the wait, let me tell you. He had one of those wiry bodies, all subtle muscle definition with a flat stomach and a cute belly button that stuck out. His skin was a beautiful olive shade all over, with none of those nasty, pasty patches where the sun hasn’t reached. It was all I could do not to drool.

Anyway, I was aware he was doing exactly the same thing to me. When I pondered the assembled multitudes, I could tell his eyes were darting all over me. Mind you, he had less to go on than I did. I don’t wear bikinis, mainly because, as I might have mentioned earlier, I have boobs the size of a medium family saloon. They don’t look good in bikinis. They don’t look good in anything. Keep everything safely gathered—that’s always been my motto.

Even in a one-piece, I attracted attention as I walked along the edge of the pool. Maybe it was my shaved head. I probably gave the impression of training so seriously I was prepared to go bald to cut one-hundredth of a second off my personal best. If that was people’s impression, I quickly dispelled it once in the water. I’m more of the float-around-the-pool-like-a-large-inflatable type than a serious swimmer.

I’m not like Vanessa. She’s part fish. On dry land, she’s out of her element, all languid movement, like a pale snail. Throw her in water, however, and she’s transformed. She jets through the wet stuff like a torpedo, tumble-turns at the end of the lap, and pushes off. If I tried a tumble turn, I’d dash my head against the tiles and need resuscitation. I watched Vanessa swim and wanted to check behind her ears for gills. She was beautiful.

We had a fantastic time. The best was going on the long slide. We climbed steps for what seemed forever, and when we got to the top, it was all I could do to stop clinging to the rail or sinking to my knees in panic. I’m talking high! Mind you, the view was brilliant. The pool was laid out beneath us like a blue carpet, small figures frolicking in the water. Then we had to get into the mouth of a huge chute, with water churning around, and we were swept into darkness. The first time I tried it, Vanessa and Jason nearly had to pry my fingers away from the side of the chute with a chisel. I was petrified. And then I was plunging, whirling in the void, sweeping around bends, legs flinging up into the air in the most inelegant fashion, before I was catapulted into the pool, water rushing and roaring in my ears. I was suspended for a while in the calm blue before popping to the surface like a demented cork. I screamed the whole time. Including underwater, which explained my purple-faced coughing fit by the side of the pool.

I leaped out and raced up the steps for another go.

After a couple of hours, the crowds thinned as people went home, I supposed, for their dinners. Night fell, floodlights came on, and the whole place was even more beautiful. The water reflected the lights; it was alive with shimmering flashes. Jason came up behind me in the deep end and gave me a dunking. I bobbed to the surface, spluttering, and he wrapped his arms around me. He kissed me briefly, his lips on mine like an electric shock, but I pulled away. It didn’t feel right somehow. Not there. Not then.

Eventually, we got out of the pool and sat at a table in the café area, with Cokes and packets of chips. I was starving from all that sun and water and laughter and exercise. Vanessa’s face glowed. She looked happy and animated. I felt infused with warmth, for her, for Jason. I tell you, things didn’t get much better than this.

I should have known it couldn’t last.

Jason glanced at his watch but we already knew it was time for home. Reluctantly I gathered my things together and Nessa and I took off for the changing rooms.

I got under the shower in one cubicle, while Nessa disappeared into another. I felt I could not get enough water over me, standing there, face upturned to the jet. I rubbed my hands over my skin, the faint smell of chlorine like a perfume. Of course, in the excitement and the rush I hadn’t brought any shower gel. I wondered if Nessa had been more organized.

I stepped from the shower and tapped against the door of her cubicle.

“Nessa,” I said.

I hadn’t realized the cubicle wasn’t locked. The door swung open.

“You don’t have any shower gel, by any…”

She was naked. I apologized as she turned her back to me. I pulled the cubicle door closed.

I felt sick to my stomach. Not because I’d seen her naked. But because I’d seen the damage. Cuts, welts, and scratches on her stomach, and one bright laceration at the top of her left hip. They burned in my brain. Injuries hidden from the world, covered even by a bathing suit.

I went to the toilet and threw up. The shower was still running. I don’t think she heard me.

No one said much on the drive back. I sat quietly in the front seat and tilted my head toward the stars. I stared at one spot in the sky. I called it Vanessa. Before long, the periphery of my vision was filled with spots of light. They began to make a pattern.

Chapter 20

A different kind of statement

There was a message on the answering machine when I got home. The police. They wanted me to come to the station to make a statement about the attempted robbery at Crazi-Cheep. I called back. They asked if I could come as soon as possible. The Fridge wasn’t home, so I took the bus. The last thing I felt like doing was sitting at home. I welcomed the distraction. The police told me the lateness of the hour made no difference. There was someone there who could take a statement. The cop shop didn’t close.

I went through the doors of the station and gave my name at reception. The officer told me to take a seat, that someone would attend to me soon. I sat in a torn vinyl chair and studied posters of missing persons. Last seen in Townsville in 1995. Parents anxious for information. A wife who went to the local shops in 2001 for tea bags and had never returned. Children who went to parties and were never seen again. So many lives with holes in them.

Eventually, I was taken by a female police officer into an interview room. She chatted in a friendly fashion until a plainclothes officer arrived. He asked me questions about the attempted robbery, while the other officer jotted notes on a pad. The whole thing must have taken about half an hour. When we were done, the note taker left the room, presumably to type up my statement. I sat in the chair, nursing a dull headache.

The plainclothes officer talked, but I didn’t pay attention. To be honest, I didn’t want to look at him. I could feel his eyes, like a stain on my body, as if he was mentally undressing me. It had happened before. I suppose it will happen again. It makes me feel sick. In other circumstances I would have reacted. In the past I had humiliated the sleazebags whose gaze lingered on me longer than necessary. But I wasn’t in the mood today, so I kept my eyes down and answered his questions in monosyllables.

The female officer returned. I signed the statement. I was taken back to reception and told I might have to appear in court as a witness, unless the guy pleaded guilty. They’d be in contact.

I caught the bus home. The Fridge still wasn’t in.

I was desperately tired. All that sunshine and water and exercise. I went to bed.

I didn’t sleep all night. I don’t think I even closed my eyes.

Chapter 21

Time for action

Tell me I got it wrong. Please.

This is the way I thought it through. Not so much a logical argument, more a series of images that coalesced. Stars on the edge.

Mrs. Aldrick. Nervous. Not a comic figure, after all. Not someone to laugh at or make stupid jokes about how she seemed constantly on the verge of panic. No. Someone with a history. Someone who had been made that way by years of cruelty. Someone who, even though she no longer lived with the source of terror, had it ingrained in her responses. A door slamming, a voice raised. Enough to make her blood race, her nerves twitch. Seeking a place to hide, even years later. Someone who knew better than to give out unauthorized phone numbers.

Vanessa. Withdrawn, shy, no confidence. Reluctant to share feelings. Scared when the weekend for her visit with her dad was approaching. Tears on a bench. Afterward, more withdrawn than normal. Aggressive, distracted—sometimes at the same time. Cuts and scratches in places where cuts and scratches should not be. Fresh wounds. Recent wounds. Inflicted in areas normally hidden.

Tell me I got it wrong. Please.

At some time, around six in the morning—the darkness was starting to dissolve—I stopped crying. I wasn’t aware I had begun, but my pillow was wet. I took a deep, shuddering breath and something amazing happened. The sadness and feeling of powerlessness disappeared and were replaced by a knot of anger. Sheer rage was lodged between my ribs and I knew nothing would get rid of it—nothing except finding a man whose name I didn’t know, whose appearance was a mystery. A man about whom I knew nothing, except that he lived somewhere in the city and he was Vanessa’s father.

I needed to tell him a few things.

I went to school, though I didn’t feel like it. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. There was nothing I could say to Vanessa, either. I knew it instinctively. If I tried to broach the subject, she’d clam up. God knows she clammed up even when the conversation wasn’t threatening.

I tried to keep up my spirits, if only for her sake, to offer a veneer of normality. The hardest part was resurrecting a sense of humor that felt dead within me. But that was the Calma persona now, so I worked at it throughout the day. Luckily, most of the time I was fending off taunts from assorted dropkicks, so I was able to indulge in the kind of barbed humor that was second nature to me anyway.

Examples?

“Hey, Calma. If I get you a frying pan, will you bash the principal?”

“Beat it, Jamie.”

Okay, so I wasn’t in the greatest form.

During the morning break, I decided that moping around, trying to dredge up a personality, was not the way to go. I needed action. So I went to the office and borrowed their Yellow Pages. It took some finding, but eventually I got the number of the Office of Births, Deaths, and Marriages at the Department of Justice. Students can’t make phone calls from the school office—not unless we have written permission from the principal, both assistant principals, and the director of education, and are in receipt of a decree in Latin signed by the Pope—so I got some change and went to the public phone across the road.

Students are not supposed to use that either, because we’re not allowed to leave the school grounds unless we have written permission from the principal.

I dialed the number and a bored voice told me I had reached the Office of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, that it was a good morning, that her name was Julie, and that she was prepared to help me. As it turned out, she got at least one of those things wrong. I started the conversation brightly enough, mind.

“G’day, Julie,” I said. “I am hoping you can help me. I’m trying to track down the name of a person. The only information I’ve got is that he has a daughter, whose name I could give you, but it probably wouldn’t help because she has taken on her mother’s maiden name, since the guy I’m looking for divorced her mother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I was aware I hadn’t explained very well, so I tried another tack.

“Do you keep records of divorces?”

“Certainly not,” said Julie, in a tone of voice usually reserved for responses to dirty phone calls.

“How about birth certificates?” It occurred to me that, knowing Vanessa’s birth date, I might be able to track down a copy of her certificate, and this would lead to the name of her father.

“Well, yes. That’s why we are called the Office of Births, Deaths, and Marriages.”

“Excellent,” I replied. “Tell me, Julie, are these birth certificates available for public scrutiny?”

“No.”

“Would you care to clarify that?”

“You want me to clarify the word
no
?”

“If you’re capable. You see, Julie, the word
no
seems to imply that your office is merely a repository of information. It suggests filing cabinets full of dusty documents no one is allowed to see. Why bother even having a phone number? Why bother having a receptionist, come to that, unless your only function is to stonewall inquiries?”

There was a sharp intake of breath. I got the impression I hadn’t made a new friend here. When she spoke again, the earpiece frosted over and a chilly mist numbed my ear.

“Access to birth certificates is only available for the person named on the certificate or, under certain circumstances, members of the immediate family.
Are
you immediate family?”

“Not in the limited technical sense.”

“Is there anything else I can be of assistance with?”

“I find that inconceivable. Thank you. It’s been a rare pleasure and privilege chatting with you, Julie. Have a nice day.”

Okay, so I might have handled the whole process better. I had been entertaining images of going into a record office and sorting through ledgers while some rosy-cheeked old biddy offered me cups of tea and assorted chocolate cookies. That was the way it worked in detective books. Clearly, real life wasn’t so easy.

I wasn’t giving up, mind. When the going gets tough, old Calma digs deep. I walked back to the school, thinking furiously. I was so lost in my own world that I wasn’t aware of Jamie Gallagher when he fell in beside me.

“Hey, Calma. I’m on the Year Ten fund-raising committee. For a gold coin donation, I could give your head a wash and full wax. Or do you think that’s robbery? What do you say?”

I stopped and stared at him. Now, Jamie’s face could not, under most circumstances, be termed a source of inspiration. Perspiration, possibly. Desperation, probably. But an idea flashed into my mind. It was simple. It was brilliant. It would work.

Maybe.

And all I needed to do was manipulate Jamie Gallagher into behaving like a dickhead. A bit like asking a dog to bark, or a fish to swim, or a receptionist to be unhelpful.

“Jamie,” I said pleasantly, “you are, without doubt, a loathsome, suppurating pimple on the backside of humanity.”

“Oh, yeah?” he sneered.

“Indeed,” I replied. “I have the utmost confidence that, faced with the simplest challenge to your intelligence and enterprise, you would fail spectacularly. In fact, I’d put money on it.”

“Oh, yeah?” he sneered, but I got the impression I’d lost him completely. He knew he was being insulted but wasn’t sure how.

“For example,” I said. “I’d be willing to bet ten dollars you couldn’t do something really simple, something any idiot could do.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?” He obviously felt relieved to be back on board the conversation.

I shrugged.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I pretended to give it thought. “All right,” I continued. “How about this? I’ll bet you ten bucks you can’t get Miss Moil to leave her office at lunchtime.”

Miss Moil was the assistant principal and in charge of scheduling and student records. She was a nice old stick, but one of those people who doesn’t have a life outside work. You got the impression she was chained to her desk, and the only way she’d leave the school would be in a pine box. She should have retired some time in the 1970s but still hung around like a stubborn cobweb. I got along well with her because, despite the air of decrepitude, she had a dry sense of humor.

“That’s easy,” said Jamie.

“Prove it,” I said.

“I just have to get her out of her office?” His face was furrowed while he looked for the catch. “And you’ll give me ten bucks?”

“Okay,” I said. “If you think that’s too easy, let’s make it more interesting. You have to get her to leave not just her office but the administration building. And you have to do it at exactly twelve-thirty. If you can, I’ll give you ten bucks. In fact, if you fail, you don’t have to pay me anything. Ten bucks against nothing, that’s the bet.”

“If I don’t get her out the building at twelve-thirty, I won’t owe you nothing, but if I do, you’ll give me ten bucks?”

“Come on, Jamie. This isn’t quantum physics. Deal or not?”

“Deal.”

I tell you. Sometimes it’s too easy.

Miss Moil gave me a big grin when I entered her office at 12:25 exactly. I was relieved to see she was alone.

“Calma Harrison! How are you, dear?”

“Good, Miss Moil. How are you?”

“Can’t complain. Wouldn’t do me much good, anyway. No one listens. Now, what can I do for you?”

She was sitting in front of her computer. She was always sitting in front of her computer.

“Oh, my mum wanted me to give you another contact number. She’s got a new cell and thought the school might want it, in case of an emergency.”

“Excellent. We’re always keen to update our database. Sometimes we have terrible trouble tracking people down.”

She tapped a few keys on her computer and brought up a window with a user name and password box. A few moments later she was into student records. I peered over her shoulder as she entered the first four letters of my last name into a search box. A window appeared with my name in the top left corner. All my details were there: address, date of birth, contact details. Miss Moil clicked the cursor on the box next to the Fridge’s name.

“Right, dear,” she said. “And the number?”

Then the door burst open and Jamie Gallagher rushed in. His timing was perfect. I didn’t want to lie to Miss Moil any more than necessary.

I’ll give Jamie this. He had hidden depths. Who would have believed he could act? Yet there he was, all sweaty, panicky, and exuding concern. Robert De Niro could have taken his correspondence course.

“Miss Moil, come quick,” he panted. “Daniel O’Leary has Jeff Brown around the neck. I think he’s going to kill him.”

I felt sorry for Miss Moil. She’s not the quickest mover in the world, partly because she is horrendously overweight.

“Oh, my,” she puffed, and pried her bulk out of her chair. Jamie was already halfway down the corridor, gesturing wildly, urging her on. Miss Moil waddled after him, patting herself on the chest with one pudgy hand, small sounds of concern and distress fading with her footsteps. I went to work.

It took less than a minute. I clicked the back button on the window and then entered “Aldr” in the search box. By the time Miss Moil returned to her office, I was long gone, and the window displaying the details of “Harrison, Calma” filled her screen.

Just occasionally, life provides you with an unexpected bonus. Jamie Gallagher was clearly a gifted actor. Unfortunately he forgot one important thing: if you are going to tell an enormous whopper, then it’s a good idea to cover yourself. When Miss Moil finally emerged into the sunshine, sweating and doubtless on the point of a coronary, there was no fight going on anywhere. The supposed combatants weren’t even in school. They had skipped and were, even as Jamie was leading Miss Moil up the garden path, engaging in minor shoplifting at the local mall.

When pressed for further information, Jamie Gallagher was at a loss. When accused of making a malicious false report, he had no answers.

He didn’t get his ten dollars.

He got five days’ suspension.

I, meanwhile, got a name and a phone number.