False Advertising (54 page)

Helen was sick of herself. She had been wandering around the house all morning, restless and agitated. She didn't know what to do with herself any more. Nothing interested her, nothing seemed to occupy her or keep her mind off her dilemma. Everything Gemma and Phoebe had said yesterday made sense, of course it did, but Helen still felt stuck. Whenever she thought of asking Myles to stay, she was terrified by the enormity of it. It was a huge life decision, and it didn't only affect her; she also had Noah to consider, and she didn't even want to think about the conversation she would have to have with David's parents. Maybe it was easier if Myles went back to Melbourne, let a few months pass. But whenever she thought of him leaving, she felt desolate.

When they had made love, Myles had touched her so deep down, Helen had glimpsed the hidden, buried grief she realised she'd been suppressing. But the grief wasn't for David; it was for herself, for all the years lost to her mother, her marriage . . . stifled and silenced and suffocated. She'd lost herself under the weight of everyone else's needs, all their expectations. And now Myles said she had to work out what she wanted. But Helen had no idea how to do that.

She was lying on the sofa, swirling in the whirlpool of her thoughts, when the sound of knocking gradually penetrated her consciousness. Helen sat up, listening, but she couldn't hear it now.

As she walked up the hall to investigate, she couldn't see anyone through the frosted glass panel in the door, but when she opened it she saw the hunched figure of a man leaving through the front gate.

‘Excuse me,' she called.

He turned around. Helen didn't recognise him.

‘Sorry,' she said, ‘I didn't hear you knocking right away. I was at the back of the house.'

‘Mrs Chapman?' he asked from where he stood. He was late middle-aged, she guessed, and terribly thin and frail-looking, with lank grey hair and a drawn, weary face.

‘Yes, I'm Mrs Chapman,' said Helen.

‘Mrs David Chapman?' he said solemnly.

Helen took a breath. ‘Well, um . . . yes, my husband was David Chapman.'

The man kept his eyes on her as he shuffled back up the path and up the steps to the porch. ‘My name is Barry Druce,' he began.

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but for the moment she couldn't place it.

‘I'm the . . . well, at least, I was . . . the bus driver who . . .' he said. ‘I was the bus driver.'

Helen just stared at him, a million thoughts crowding into her head at once. ‘How did you find me?' she asked eventually.

‘From the report of the inquest,' he explained. ‘Transit, they won't give you no information at the time. You have to sign something that you won't try to contact the family.' Then he shook his head. ‘A few months later, it's all up on the internet, for anyone to see. Addresses, the lot.'

Her head was still spinning. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Druce?'

He looked directly at her, and Helen could see the pain in his faded, hollow eyes. ‘I hope you'll forgive me, Mrs Chapman, I just had to see, had to know if you were all right. You and your little one.'

Her heart cramped suddenly in her chest. ‘Come on in, Mr Druce.'

‘No, no, Mrs Chapman,' he said. ‘I know I shouldn't of showed up like this. I don't want to bother you.'

‘You're not bothering me,' she said, stepping back. ‘Please, I'd like you to come in.'

He bowed his head and stepped inside. Helen closed the door and started down the hall. ‘This way,' she said to him.

He followed her into the front room and Helen offered him a seat. ‘Can I get you anything, a cup of tea, a glass of water?'

‘No, no, Mrs Chapman,' he said quickly. ‘I'll be right.'

Helen sat in an armchair opposite him. Neither of them said anything for a few moments. ‘Um, you wanted to know if we were all right?' Helen prompted him after a while.

‘Yes, Mrs Chapman,' he nodded. She noticed his hands were trembling in his lap. ‘It's a terrible thing . . . knowing he left a wife and a young child. Not a day goes past I don't think about it. I pray for you to Saint Louise, every day. Patron saint of widows, you know.'

‘Oh,' said Helen. ‘Thank you.'

His eyes wandered around the room. ‘So, you're okay? This is your house? You didn't have to sell up or anything?'

‘No, we're fine.'

‘And what of your little one? They don't identify children under age in the inquest.'

‘He's a boy, Noah,' said Helen. ‘He's only four years old, not quite that when it first happened. He's too young to fully understand.'

He nodded faintly, staring down at the carpet. Helen watched him. If there was ever an example of a shell of a man, Mr Druce was certainly it.

‘What about you, Mr Druce?' she asked. ‘How are you? Do you still drive buses?'

He shook his head gravely. ‘Oh, no, Mrs Chapman. Had to give it away, my nerves were shot. Took to drinking too much for a while there. I couldn't sleep at night, I'd see it happen over and over. It's a terrible thing, Mrs Chapman, a terrible thing.'

‘But you were cleared of any responsibility at the inquest,' said Helen.

‘Doesn't matter, I'll always feel responsible, Mrs Chapman. I was the one behind the wheel.'

‘But do you think you could have stopped, could have done anything different?'

‘Oh, no, Mrs Chapman, I couldn't of stopped. He was just there, he stepped out right in front of the bus.'

Helen could feel her heart thumping hard. She could ask him. Ask him right now. And then she would know. Once and for all.

‘Mr Druce?'

‘Yes, Mrs Chapman?'

‘Can I ask you something?'

‘Of course, anything.'

Helen took a deep breath. ‘Did my husband, David, did he turn to look, was he looking as he stepped off the kerb?'

‘Oh, no, no, Mrs Chapman,' he said, shaking his head very definitely. ‘That was the thing. I've played it over and over, like I said. It all only took a few seconds, but you know how sometimes things happen in slow motion? That's what it was like that day. I was headed along Broadway, coming to a green light. Then there was a loud screech and a bang, further down the road somewhere. I looked ahead, as you do, just for a second. The crowd waiting at the lights, all the heads turned at the same time, towards the noise. Funny how you remember things like that. No one was looking this way, and then one person just stepped off the kerb, just stepped off . . .' Helen was watching him – she knew he could see it now in his mind. ‘I couldn't do anything, he was right there in front of me, still looking up the street the other way. It was that quick, he wouldn't of known what hit him, Mrs Chapman.'

Helen had read and reread the report from the inquest, trying to find an answer, a reason, some piece of information that would make sense of it, give her some peace of mind. She had never been sure if he'd turned his head, never known till now if he'd suffered, even just one moment of horrifying realisation.

Helen felt tears creeping into her eyes. So that was it. A momentary lapse, distracted by something further up the road, stepping off the footpath on autopilot. A life wiped out in a matter of seconds for no reason whatsoever. Nothing could ever make sense of that, ever make it right, or wrong. It was inexplicable. And it just was.

She looked across at Mr Druce. ‘But I don't understand. Why do you feel responsible, Mr Druce?'

‘I don't know, I don't know, Mrs Chapman,' he said, shaking
his head. ‘Everyone asks me that. I don't know what to tell 'em. Except it's a terrible thing, a terrible thing, for someone's life to end, right in front of your eyes. I can't seem to let go of it. My wife, she can't stand it any more. She left to stay with her sister. She said I've got to get some help. My kids, they don't want to come and visit . . .'

He was staring down at the carpet, broken. This wasn't right: the poor man just happened to be at the wheel. It could have been anyone.

‘Is that him, is that Mr Chapman?' Barry Druce asked; he was pointing at a framed photo on a side table.

Helen nodded.

He got to his feet and approached it almost reverently, stooping down to look at it. ‘May I?' he said over his shoulder to Helen.

‘Of course.'

He picked up the photo, examining it closely for a long while. ‘He had a good face . . . he looks . . . honest.'

Helen came up behind him. ‘So you didn't see him at all?'

‘No, no, Mrs Chapman,' he said. ‘I couldn't of told you what he looked like. Light hair is all.' He gazed down at the photograph again. ‘You have a fine boy there, Mrs Chapman.'

‘Thank you.'

He set the photograph down again, being very careful to position it exactly as it had been.

‘Mr Druce,' said Helen.

He turned to look at her.

‘There's something I'd like you to know. My husband, David, he was a good man, a very compassionate man. He hated to see any kind of human suffering.' Helen paused, choosing her words. ‘I can tell you without hesitation that he would never have wanted you to suffer in this way. It was a terrible accident, but there's nothing you could have done, nothing anyone could have done. David would think it was far worse if even more lives were ruined because of it.'

Mr Druce was listening intently, his eyes glassy.

‘He'd want you to live your life, Mr Druce. Make the most of every moment. That should be his legacy.'
Not fifteen minutes later Helen was running up the hill towards Darling Street. Mr Druce had taken his leave, clutching her hand and thanking her for her kindness, before shuffling back out the gate. Helen had dashed madly around the house, wasting precious minutes looking for her keys until she remembered that Gemma had taken the car. And so she'd grabbed her handbag and started up the street on foot, walking briskly at first, till she couldn't contain herself any longer and she'd broken into a run. As she came to the corner of Darling Street, a bus was trundling up the block towards her. Helen glanced at the bus stop further up. There were two people waiting. She'd make it. She bolted, arriving breathless at the shelter as the bus pulled up beside her. Helen queued behind the other two, fumbling in her purse for change.

*

‘Um, the city please,' she said as she boarded.

‘Whereabouts, love?' the driver asked her.

‘Oh,' she hesitated, ‘do you stop somewhere around the Queen Victoria building?'

He nodded. ‘That'll be three seventy.'

She dropped the coins in the chute, took her ticket and made her way up the aisle as the bus lurched off again. There were only a few people scattered around the bus; it was the middle of the day after all. Helen dropped into a seat and sidled over near the window. She gazed out as the bus dipped and bounced its way along the road. She was riding on a bus. And it was okay. Everything was going to be okay.

When they finally pulled up at the back of the Queen Victoria building, Helen was waiting to jump straight off. She started up the street, restraining herself from running this time: she didn't want to arrive all puffed and sweaty. She had remembered she'd need her security pass and had searched in her bag while she was still on the bus, relieved though not entirely surprised to find it there – it was her only decent handbag, and the only one she ever took to work. Helen slipped the lanyard around her neck as she arrived at the front entrance of the building, and walked inside. She was not exactly dressed for work, but at least she wasn't in her daggy house clothes either. Fortunately she'd had to look half-decent to take Noah to preschool.

The security guard recognised her and smiled, nodding, as she hurried over to the lifts. She stepped inside and her heart started to race. It seemed to take an awfully long time to get to the fifteenth floor, but finally the lift came to a stop and Helen dashed out, racing up the corridor towards the office. What if he wasn't there? There was every chance, but at least she could check his schedule from her computer, send him an email direct to his BlackBerry, track him down. Helen had never appreciated modern technology more.

She went around the corner and scooted straight past her workstation to his office. Helen gave a quick knock and burst in, only to discover Myles was there but he wasn't alone. She froze as four unfamiliar faces turned to stare at her.

Myles got to his feet immediately. ‘Helen?'

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

‘This is Helen?' said one of the men, also getting to his feet. ‘Helen Chapman, I gather?'

He was walking towards her. Shit, now they were all walking towards her. Helen almost flinched as they converged on her, shaking her hand, all talking at once – at least that's what it seemed like. She suspected they were introducing themselves, but they must have been speaking in another language. Chinese? Japanese perhaps? They didn't look Asian, but Helen couldn't understand a word they were saying. And then Myles was at her side and his hand was on her elbow, the hand with the magic electrical powers.

‘Helen, you wanted to see me?' he prompted.

She looked up into his face and managed to say, ‘Yes.'

‘Excuse us, gentlemen,' Myles was saying. ‘I'm sure this won't take long. Help yourselves to another drink,' he said over his shoulder as he led Helen from the room. They walked back out through the door and Myles closed it firmly, turning to face her.

‘Helen, are you all right?'

She nodded.

‘You seemed to be in a bit of a daze just now.'

‘Yeah,' she said, slipping into a daze again, looking at his face, the face she realised she'd fallen hopelessly in love with, head
over the proverbial heels. She could tell him now, if only she was able to put two words together.

‘Helen,' he was saying patiently, ‘what is it?'