Darkwater (5 page)

Theory: Amanda Clarke killed herself.

Sitting in my bedroom, looking out at the darkness of the Moreton Bay fig that grew in our garden, I heard the bats screech, their leathery wings a whoosh in the night as they swept down on the rotten fruit that clung in clusters to the branches.

I hated bats. Once Joe had knocked one down from where it was stretched between the telegraph lines, electrocuted. Its wings were shrivelled, cracked and crisped. He had challenged me to touch it. He had promised me his pocket money for the next month. He had even said he would do all my chores. It was one of the only times I didn't take up a dare.

I was meant to be in bed so I had only my desk light on to see by. This was the first entry where I had moved away from facts and decided to leap straight into something larger – theories. I didn't know whether Amanda Clarke had killed herself but it was certainly possible. We had talked about suicide in social ed. People killed themselves when they were in trouble or depressed and believed they were alone. Father Mullaney, who took the class, told us that suicide was a sin. Only God could decide when our time was up.

‘What happens if you don't believe in God?' I asked, and he fixed me with a cold stare.

‘That,' he said, ‘is the problem. Lack of belief will drive any of us to despair.'

Kate thought Amanda had been strange before she died.

I didn't know her well enough to tell whether there was a change to her. From a distance, she seemed like someone who would have had no reason to kill herself. She was Amanda – cool, perfect and untouchable. The only noteworthy event in her life at that time (that I knew of) was the fact that she had dropped Stevie, and he was the one who had seemed upset about that.

‘He's a wreck,' Joe had told me at the time. ‘He has no idea why.'

‘Was there someone else?' I had to ask the question as though I didn't care. It was the only way I ever got any information out of him.

‘If there wasn't, there will be soon.' And he had grinned at me, puffing out his chest.

But there was an indication that Amanda was, as Kate had said, strange, when she came to our house two days before her body was found at the waterfront.

She had been crying. Joe, who was always awkward with any show of emotion, was hugging her, holding her head against his shoulder, his long blond hair tangled into the smooth sweep of her own dark brown hair that fell, like mink, to her shoulders.

Cassie and I had almost walked in on them, but we had stopped just outside the kitchen. With her hand on my arm, Cassie's body shook with laughter as we witnessed what we first thought was a love scene.

‘Jesus,' Cassie mouthed. ‘She's only just broken up with Stevie.'

Joe moved to kiss her, brushing her hair with one hand. Amanda stepped back agitated, and I didn't want to watch any more. Tugging Cassie by the wrist, I pulled her out into the hall.

‘I'm sorry.' Joe sounded embarrassed.

She didn't reply.

‘It was a mistake.'

When she finally spoke she told him she thought he was her friend.

‘I am,' he insisted.

Her reply was scornful: ‘I thought I could talk to you.'

I didn't want to listen any more. ‘Let's go,' I mouthed to Cassie and when she didn't move, I spoke loudly, wanting them to know we were there.

Joe had already stepped away from Amanda and she had wiped the tears from her eyes. He glared at me as I poured two large glasses of juice.

‘Let's go to my room,' Joe eventually said, not even daring to look at Amanda. ‘Away from them.'

Both Joe's bedroom and my room are above the sunroom that Tom added to the house. It was meant to be the place where we watched TV, played games and, invariably, fought, although as we had grown we used it less and less. If you opened the window in Joe's room, you could climb out onto the sunroom roof. It looked west, up towards the overpass and flats, baking in the afternoon heat, the tar on the roof often melting, sticky and sweet, into the soles of our thongs. This was where Joe went to smoke dope, knowing that the sickly burning smell would float away. In his room it lingered in the seagrass matting, a dead giveaway on the rare occasions that Dee went in and tried to clean up.

Cassie and I sat on my bed painting our nails, a different colour on each finger, trying to catch drifts of conversation from the roof below. I grew bored quickly, and went to put a record on, but Cassie, who'd always had a bit of a crush on Joe, wanted to keep listening.

‘Do you reckon they'd give us a smoke?' she asked, and I rolled my eyes.

Joe was doing most of the talking. He mumbled at the best of times and it was close to impossible to make out much of what he was saying. The little we caught was dull. It involved homework, a new Slade record and then the party at Cherry Atkinson's that weekend.

‘You going?'

Amanda sucked in the last of the joint and stubbed it out on the roof.

‘No.' Her reply was abrupt.

‘Why not?' There was a sizzle of a match as Joe lit a cigarette. ‘I thought you were friends.'

Joe had once told me that he felt sorry for Cherry. They only went to her house because her parents were often away, and they were able to drink as much of the Atkinsons' alcohol as they wanted. Once Cherry's father, Len, had come home early and discovered them all. He lost it, Joe said. More so than just getting pissed off about a party. He hauled a couple of the kids up and tried to fight them when they refused to leave. Lyndon was the only one who took up the challenge. Another time, the police were called by neighbours, and once, a kid was taken to hospital after nearly drowning in the pool. Dee and several other parents had banned Cherry's parties unless adults were present. Joe just never told Dee that was where he was going.

Amanda said she and Cherry weren't really friends. ‘I just hang with her at the moment. What's so strange about that?'

‘Nothing,' Joe assured her.

‘I don't see why everyone goes on about it.' She sounded irritated.

And then she told him she had to get going.

‘Already?' I could hear the disappointment in Joe's voice. He asked if she was all right.

Her reply was monosyllabic.

Thinking the conversation was now over and that Cassie would finally let me put a record on, I slipped the vinyl out of the sleeve and held it between my hands. Cassie was waving her nails in the heat of the afternoon breeze, the smell of the enamel acrid and sharp. Suddenly she put a finger to her lips, telling me to wait. I almost ignored her, but then I too heard Amanda's voice as she told Joe she was a mess. It was a comment that surprised me, just as her tears had, because I couldn't even begin to guess what someone like her had to be troubled about.

‘Everything is wrong.' She stood up now, the loose gravel on the roof crunching under her feet. ‘Home is shit. School is shit. I'm–'

She stopped.

‘I've got to go,' she told Joe.

‘I'll walk with you.'

She refused.

He told her he had to go the shop anyway, to get stuff for dinner.

I knew it was a lie.

Amanda became agitated. ‘I need to be on my own.'

Give up, I wanted to tell Joe. Let her go. And it seemed he eventually realised that for himself.

‘God, he wants her bad,' Cassie told me, giggling as she flicked her hair out of her eyes. Someone had recently told her that she had great hair and she never tired of reminding herself and her friends of the fact. ‘Let's go and nick some of his dope.'

‘No way.' I looked at her like she'd lost her mind.

She rolled her eyes. ‘He'll never know.'

At the end of last year, Sonia, Cassie and I had tried dope together under the Gladesville Bridge. Cassie had nicked it from her mum, Karen. The three of us huddled together in the shade of the concrete pylons, the roar of the traffic overhead punctuated by regular thumps as the cars sped over the supports. The river was steely, smooth and slick in the stillness, as we all took turns drawing back on the joint. I coughed enough to cry and didn't feel a thing. Sonia giggled and said she felt a little weird. Cassie swore she was out of it. Lying down in a bed of purple jacaranda flowers and spreading her arms overhead, she told us she was floating on a sea of mauve, all the way to heaven.

Since then, Cassie told us she'd had it a few times and it got better each time she rolled up and smoked. Now, she wanted to do it again. ‘I'll ask him for some,' she said, tucking her hair behind her ears.

I forbade her from going near Joe. ‘He's not even here,' I said, certain I'd heard the front door close, followed by the clang of the gate on its hinges.

I was right. He wasn't home. Later, when Cassie left, I found him walking up from the waterfront with Sammy at his heels. He scooped her up in his arms and held her close, breathing in her warmth, and then seeing me, he put her down again.

‘Where's Amanda?' I asked him, half-wanting to stir him and then, as he stared at me, deciding against it. ‘She seemed upset.'

He told me she'd gone home ages ago.

Later, I wondered whether he'd headed out to follow her, to find out what was wrong. He'd never told me that was what he had done and so I could only guess, but I supposed it was likely. He had a crush on her. She was upset. And despite being a pain, my brother was kinder than most, he was the type to try and help.

When her body was discovered, he must have wished he'd left immediately and caught up with her in the street, getting her to talk a bit more about whatever was upsetting her. I know that whenever I thought about her, floating facedown in that water, her foot wedged in between the boulders, the tide lapping over the mud, I wished he had. His regret could only have been worse than mine.

Fact: They don't give you long to get over the death of a sister.

About a week after Amanda died, her younger brother Daniel returned to our class. I had expected he would be away for months. The enormity of what had happened seemed to warrant more than just the kind of absence you might have with a flu.

We were in the maths room, doing a page of logarithms, the overhead fans ticking monotonously as the blades pushed through the thickness of the warm air. I ran my fingers down the columns of numbers, but the heat and the stillness made it hard to keep the rows aligned and I knew I was getting more wrong than right. Next to me, Sonia chewed the end of her biro, the clatter loud as she dropped it on the floor. She bent down to pick it up, but Matthew Digby had already stretched one leg forward and was nudging it towards his own desk.

Mr Ronsen looked up just as Sonia turned around to demand it back.

‘Silence.' But because he had a lisp, the word came out as ‘thilenth', and it was a command that always caused a slight ripple of laughter.

‘Enough.' He raised his voice now, unperturbed by the amusement. He must have been used to it and had, I supposed, hardened himself against any ridicule caused by his speech impediment. ‘Back to your work.'

‘Glad he said work and not exercises,' Sonia whispered to me.

I was about to answer, when the door to the classroom opened, letting in a stream of burning northerly sunlight. Miss Ingleton was at the entrance, and Mr Ronsen pushed back his chair, heaving his heavy frame up from his seat. We could hear them muttering for a few moments, and then Miss Ingleton told us all to put our pens down.

‘Thank you. I only want your attention for a few moments – just to let you know Daniel Clarke is returning to school. I know you'll all try to help him through this difficult time.' She looked around the room, her eyes finally resting on Mikey Hayle, one of Daniel's friends. ‘Mikey, I'd like you to come with me.'

He stood up in a rush, his exercise book and pencil case hitting the lino, the pens and pencils scattering across the room. Cassie, who was near him, helped him gather them together while Miss Ingleton waited. His freckled face was burning as he hastily tried to stuff everything into his schoolbag.

None of us knew what to say when they came back to the classroom. We all avoided looking at Daniel as he took a seat. Moments later, I stole a quick glance. He had his head down and was scratching the desktop, gouging a jagged line into the softness of the wood.

It was only Cassie who was brave enough to ask him how he was going. He just nodded at her, turning back to his carving.

I admired her in that moment. I think all of us who witnessed that brief exchange did.

At the end of the hour, I watched as Daniel packed his books in his bag. I waited, hoping to catch him alone before I joined the others for lunch so that I too could say something to him, anything to let him know how sorry I was about his sister. But Mikey stayed close, and I gave up, ashamed.

Outside, you could hear classroom doors opening, the slap of sandals on concrete and the shout of kids as we emerged from darkened stuffy rooms into the full glare of the day. That was when I saw Nicky Blackwell again. He was headed to the tuckshop queue and I hesitated for only a brief moment before deciding that I had nothing to lose.

Standing right behind him, I could look without him knowing. His hair was bleached by the sun and hung to his shoulders. His arms were tanned, deep copper. On his left wrist he had three strips of leather tied close. Probably given to him by a girlfriend, I thought. Like all the boys in older years, he never wore shorts, even when the temperature was pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the fifth day in a row. Instead, his cords clung close to his legs, frayed at the bottom, and on his feet he wore black thongs, despite the fact that they were banned.

Nicky was a surfer. He hung with a group of older kids who took a panel van out to the beach on the weekend. He rode his skateboard to school each day, crouching low as he swooped down the hill that led to the gates, curling in at the last minute and leaping off with only inches to spare. I loved that arc. It was, in fact, what had first made me notice him.

‘Hey.' He turned as I accidentally stepped on the back of his thong, and then seeing it was me, he grinned, teeth white against the darkness of his skin. ‘It's Joe's little sister. The one who won't tell me her name.'

I looked him square in the eye. None of my friends were around, it was just him and me. People die, I thought, thinking of Daniel's face when he'd come back to class. People like Amanda are just suddenly gone. It was time to take a risk.

‘I'll tell you my name.' I took a deep breath. ‘But there has to be an exchange.'

‘Nicky.' He bowed with mock ceremony. ‘Nicky Blackwell.'

‘I know. That's not the exchange I meant.' I could feel my breath, fast and furious, fluttering with a heat I wanted only to dampen, and I had to steady myself.

He was curious now, forgetting to progress in the line, the gap between him and the person in front widening as he waited for me to explain.

‘I want a skateboarding lesson,' I said. ‘And then I'll tell you my name.'

He shook his head, his hair falling in his eyes as he looked me up and down. ‘Girls don't skate,' he eventually said.

‘Why not?' I asked. ‘I have two legs, two arms.' And I wanted to suggest that he familiarise himself with Germaine Greer, but I knew I'd lose him if I went down that track.

He smiled. ‘I could find out your name anyway.'

It was true. ‘Just one lesson.'

And then, as Mrs Judd called out ‘Next' from the tuckshop window and he realised that she meant him, he eventually nodded. ‘Why not? Friday. At the front of the school gates – four-thirty.'

Sonia didn't believe I'd had the nerve. Nor did I. The excitement was sparkling and cold each time I recalled the moment, first to her, and then frequently to myself, wanting only to silently recount that conversation over and over again.

We were swimming in her pool after school, the icy water a brilliant chlorined turquoise that stung our eyes and dried our skin into smooth scales. I had been trying to do a backwards flip, each time landing with a slap in the water, while she lay on the pebblecrete, shifting the lines of her bikini to make sure her tan was even.

‘How was that one?' I asked, emerging from the deep end, my stomach scraping on the edge as I hauled myself out, sprinkling cold droplets onto the heat of her skin.

‘Didn't see it,' Sonia admitted, and I scooped my hand down to splash her in frustration.

She grinned. ‘Just 'cos you're Nicky Blackwell's girlfriend–'

‘I asked you to give me a score.' I sat on the warmth of the small fake stones, holding my knees close to my chest with one arm as I leant across to get the bottle of GI cordial we had left tossed in the grass, the plastic sweating in the heat.

She'd finished it all.

‘There's more in the fridge.' Sonia pointed to the house.

Upstairs, the curtains were closed and as I tried to wipe the grass off my feet before stepping into the kitchen, I could hear Sonia's mum, Jude, on the phone.

‘The police are saying there was definitely foul play.'

My eyes became used to the darkness inside, and I could see her, twisting the cord around her finger, one leg up on the chair in front of her as she inspected her toenail polish.

‘I saw Laura,' she continued, ‘up at the greengrocer's.' There was a moment's silence, as she balanced the phone in the crook of her shoulder and took a calendar off the wall. ‘She's married to the sergeant, the one who originally had the case. Yep, yep,' and she nodded as she confirmed whatever the other person was saying. ‘He's handed it over to the detectives at Ryde. No, no. She didn't want to say too much. Well, she can't. But it looks like there was evidence that Amanda hit her head, or her head had been hit.'

She ran her fingers down one of the columns of the calendar.

‘We're free that night. But why don't you come here? I don't feel too good about leaving Sal and Sonia alone in the house at the moment.' She leant over the desk and wrote a couple of words on the calendar before hanging it back up. ‘I know,' she added. ‘It makes you worry. I've always just assumed they are safe. Sal doesn't go down there much, but I know Sonia does.'

I let the screen door slam behind me. She looked up from the phone, and smiled as I pointed at the fridge.

Jude was about ten years younger than Dee. She'd had Sal at nineteen, and Sonia two years later.

Dee once said Jude was frustrated. ‘It's what happens when you have kids too young,' she warned me. ‘You spend most of your life living for other people and it's hard to find out who you really are until much later – and by then, no one cares any more.'

Jude hung up as I made another bottle of cordial, this time raspberry, the colour a completely fake crimson that Dee would describe as carcinogenic.

‘Need anything to eat?' Jude was in her bikini, and I hoped she wasn't planning to join us by the pool.

I told her we were fine, and to my relief she reached for her sundress, which was draped over a kitchen chair, and said she was just going to duck up to the shops.

‘I'll lock the front door behind me.' She had the keys in her hand. ‘And I won't be gone long.'

I said there was no need to worry. She'd left us often enough in the past.

She shook her head. ‘That was before.' She put her hands on my shoulders. ‘You girls need to be careful. I don't want to alarm you. But things aren't...' She searched for the right word. ‘Safe.'

As she turned the key in the lock, I wished she hadn't. I didn't want to be afraid.

From the other end of the house, I could hear a radio. Sal would be doing her homework already, the exercise books open on the desk, her writing neat and even, as she made her way down the list of problems.

I let the back door slam shut behind me as I made my way across the grass, carefully avoiding the bindies, to where Sonia was still sunbaking. She didn't look up as she complained about the fact that I was blocking her sunlight.

‘You know your mum reckons the police think Amanda was murdered?' Even as I spoke I had a sense that I was collapsing several ‘facts' into one, and that somehow the whole was being distorted.

‘What do you mean?' Sonia sat up as I tried to relay the conversation I'd overheard.

Her eyes were wide. ‘Who would do it?' She tilted the cordial bottle back, taking a long swill before handing it over to me again. ‘Do you reckon there's some maniac or rapist hanging around?'

I shook my head.

‘It can't have been one of her friends.' Sonia wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Even Lyndon.' And she shook her head as she voiced what I, too, hadn't wanted to contemplate. ‘Her poor family.'

I thought of Daniel.

Sonia must have too: ‘Maybe we should write him a card,' she suggested.

It was a good idea, and although I knew I was meant to head home so that Sonia could start her homework, I didn't think Jude would mind.

Sonia searched for cardboard and scissors and although Sal protested for a moment at being disturbed, when Sonia told her what she was looking for and why, she decided to be helpful.

‘I've got coloured inks,' she offered, opening up her prized collection of stationery, which she always kept, in perfect order, on top of the desk on her side of the room.

We laid out all we needed on the kitchen table. Sal drew a vase of flowers, while Sonia and I composed a message.

Dear Daniel,
we eventually wrote.
We are very sorry for your loss.
And we each signed our names at the bottom.

The next morning, when I went to slip it in his locker, there were already at least ten other cards, the envelopes crammed into the small gap between frame and door. I hoped that knowing we all cared would help in some way, but I also felt the futility of our expressions of sympathy. His sister had been found dead, her head hit, her body bloodied and drowned. How could our cards do anything to shift that darkness?