Promise (10 page)

‘Oh. Right.’ The woman’s gaze slid sideways to Charlie.

‘Well. Time to get back on the road.’ Anna adjusted her seat back.

‘Have a good trip,’ said the woman, fitting in her ear buds. She strode back to the main road and went left, her ponytail bouncing with each step.

Anna turned to Charlie. ‘Do you need to do a wee?’

Charlie shook her head. ‘I used to have a car seat. In Mummy’s old car.’

‘Yes, it would be better if you were in one. But we’ll get to Pat’s soon.’

Charlie chewed her top lip. ‘It had turtles on it.’

‘Did it?’

She nodded. ‘I’m thirsty.’

Anna passed her the bottle. They were almost out of water. She’d leave the last of it for Charlie. ‘I’m going to do a quick wee. Do you want to come?’

Charlie climbed out, holding her bandaged arm in front of her. A couple of flies buzzed around them and there was the drone of machinery in the distance. Anna was so tired and hot, she couldn’t even tell if it was a tractor or a plane.

Charlie squatted and urinated. Then she looked around at the paddocks stretching into the distance, and back down the road where the woman had disappeared.

She whispered, ‘Where are we?’

Anna stood and pulled her pants up. She knew that was not Charlie’s real question.

‘I took you away from Mummy and Harlan because I was afraid you’d get hurt.’ She crouched back down. ‘I was afraid he’d hurt you even more than he already did.’ She had an image of his fist drawn back to hit Charlie.

‘I just want it to be me and Mummy in the caravan again.’ The girl’s face crumpled and she tipped towards Anna.

Anna caught her small body and held her tightly. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

The girl shook with sobs. She smelt of stale urine and her hand was moist on Anna’s arm. Anna held her, the sun blaring down on them.

‘It’s okay,’ Anna said again, but only because she didn’t know what else to say.

T
hey reached the hills south of Mullumbimby at four o’clock, almost twenty-four hours since she’d bundled Charlie into the car and driven away. Anna was so tired she felt drugged, as if she was seeing the road through a shimmering veil. She could sleep once she got to Pat’s. Only another half-hour.

Charlie sat quietly in the back. Occasionally Anna heard the girl say something softly, but when Anna said, ‘What was that?’ the girl said, ‘Nothing.’

She pulled into a gravel driveway to look again at the map and trace a route to Pat’s.

‘Do you want to come and sit in the front?’ Having Charlie beside her might help her stay awake.

The girl climbed into the front and Anna did up the seatbelt, for what good it would do. She pulled back onto the narrow, winding road, and through the trees caught glimpses of emerald-green hills and storm clouds in the distance. When she was with Pat, she had fallen in love with the area, fallen for its generosity, its fecundity and, for a while, fantasised about living there with him, living there long enough to call herself a local.

The potholed road edged along a ridge and down onto the flood plain where sugarcane grew in rows and a few cows grazed. They passed a golf course and high school and just before they hit the main street, she turned left onto a back-street detour that she remembered Pat taking. She couldn’t imagine this small town would have CCTV but she was glad to reach the road that would carry them across the plain and up towards the thickly forested range that stretched across the horizon.

Charlie sat very still, her legs sticking out in front of her, Bunny on her lap. She said Anna’s name very quietly.

‘Yes?’

‘That’s your name,’ she said.

‘That’s right.’ Anna lowered the visor against the sun. ‘We’ll be arriving at my friend Pat’s soon. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

They left the paddocks behind and wound deeper into the valley where trees arched over the road, dappling the light. They crossed a couple of narrow cement causeways and Anna saw that water in the rocky creek was high. She slowed as they entered a small village – a cluster of houses where a kid rode his bike along the shoulder of the road – then the road turned to gravel, and pale-trunked trees grew dense and close. The air coming in the open window was cooler and carried the tangy scent of damp forest. It was much more overgrown than when she’d first come here as a nineteen-year-old, more bushy even than the time she’d visited a few years ago.

They passed a dozen dirt driveways disappearing into the trees. She drove slowly, afraid she wouldn’t recognise Pat’s road. God, she hoped he would be there. What if he’d moved? No, she couldn’t imagine him leaving; he’d spent a couple of decades working on the place. And if he wasn’t at home, she would just let herself in.

Charlie was silent beside her. Anna wondered what the girl understood of what was happening, or if it was just more of being carted around by adults, always at the mercy of others.

The road climbed steadily, winding along the side of a steep hill. They passed a driveway where ten or so letterboxes were lined up on a fence railing, and Anna realised too late that it was Pat’s. She did a U-turn, and a couple of kilometres up his potholed driveway, turned off onto what she hoped was the right narrow track, the grass between the two wheel ruts brushing noisily against the underside of the car.

Charlie tucked her feet under her and knelt up to look out the window. They passed a small falling-down timber shed, the wood bleached and cracking, weeds growing high up the walls.

When he was seventeen, Pat had inherited eighty grand from his great aunt and bought an old banana farm. Over time he’d sold shares to a few friends who’d built their own shacks and cottages, and he made a living harvesting from his tree plantations and crafting furniture. When Anna first met him, he’d been there for fifteen years and had built his own house and already planted up paddocks of hardwood trees.

A tall man walked along the driveway, a brown kelpie trotting beside him. He stepped off into the knee-high grass, and waited for their car to draw level.

Anna pulled to a stop. ‘Hi.’

He nodded, his tanned face unsmiling. He bent to look in the car.

‘I’m looking for Pat’s place,’ she said.

‘And who are you?’ He had a long grey ponytail and startling blue eyes.

‘I’m an old friend of his. I’ve been here before, a few years ago, but it’s grown up since then. I can’t quite figure out where to go.’

‘Yeah. Grows fast.’ He considered her for a moment and straightened up. He pointed down the track. ‘Take the right fork, then after a few k’s, the next right fork and you’ll be there.’

He bent to look in the car again and offered Charlie a small smile. Anna saw he was holding a machete down beside his leg.

‘Thank you.’

The right fork led them down into the valley and the track became rougher; she had to slow to steer through deep dips scoured by rain.

‘He had a dog,’ said Charlie, kneeling up, her good arm braced on the dashboard.

‘He did.’

Anna knew there were hundreds of houses tucked into the folds of the valleys around here. The farmers had sold out to hippies who built ramshackle homes from secondhand materials and lost control of the weeds, especially the lantana. The seed bank in the soil had sprouted with native trees and exotics like camphor laurel, and now the hills were thick with trees again. Most of the houses Anna had visited the year she spent with Pat had been unlined or works-in-progress. She’d found it very romantic, the idea of crafting your own home, forging your own way, not following someone else’s ideas of a successful life. This secluded valley was now a perfect place for Anna and Charlie to hide. And Pat was the perfect person to hide them. He had always questioned authority, and was someone happy to buck the system.

She took the last fork and recognised the two great clumps of bamboo ahead. Pat had told her that they were planted by the old farmer as a last-resort food for cows in lean times.

‘We’re almost there.’
We made it.
Anna was afraid she’d start crying. She steered the car between the bamboo clumps, which had thickened up until there was only a car-width’s space left between them. The car emerged into the clearing, and there was Pat’s house. It was painted yellow now but otherwise was the same low, rectangular timber hut with a wide verandah. Behind the house rose a wall of trees and beyond that, the forested hill. A family of ducks strolled across the yard.

She pulled up on the grass in front of a big new tin shed, turned off the ignition and sat for a moment, her hands still on the wheel. Charlie bent her head to peer through the windscreen and scanned from the house around to the shed. Anna figured it was simple, practical vigilance. If your home – your own bedroom – was a place of danger, why would you imagine anywhere in the world to be safe?

Pat appeared on the verandah. He leapt down onto the grass and in a few long strides crossed the lawn to the car, smiling broadly. His brown hair was short now but he had the same fine-boned, tanned face.

Anna spoke through her open window, too exhausted to move. ‘Hi.’

‘Anna! What a lovely surprise.’ He rested one hand on the roof of the car and bent down to look in at them. ‘And this is?’

‘Charlie,’ she said.

‘Well.’ He smiled. ‘Why don’t you come in?’ He opened the car door and extended a hand to her. She climbed out and into his warm, strong hug. He smelt faintly of sweat and wood smoke and was thinner than she remembered. She could have stayed there, leaning into him, but she felt a feathery touch on her leg.

Pat stepped back and looked down at Charlie, whose singlet barely covered her bare bottom.

‘What floppy ears your rabbit has,’ he said.

‘It’s a bunny,’ the girl muttered, her hand gripping Anna’s shorts. ‘Do you have a dog?’

Pat smiled. ‘No, not at the moment. Do you?’

‘I’m getting one.’

A woman emerged from the cabin and pegged something onto a line slung under the verandah roof. Anna felt a rush of dismay. She’d imagined Pat was still single. This was a complication she didn’t need.

‘That’s Sabine,’ said Pat. The woman was tall, with a long, narrow face and brown hair tied up in a knot. She seemed to be ignoring them.

Charlie tugged on the leg of Anna’s shorts. Anna crouched down and said, ‘This is Pat. He’s my good friend. Let’s find something to wrap around your waist, eh?’

She looked up at Pat. ‘Do you have a sarong or something we could borrow?’

His eyes flicked to the car. ‘You don’t have clothes with you?’

She shook her head.

He smiled, that wide, ready smile. ‘Sure. I’ve got something. Come in.’

Anna took Charlie’s hand and they followed Pat over the lush lawn to the house. ‘Sabine . . .’ he said as they reached the steps to the verandah. ‘This is Anna and Charlie.’

‘Don’t mind me, just hanging out the washing.’ Sabine’s voice carried the warmth and authority of the mistress of the house and she had an accent. German or Dutch, Anna thought.

Last time Anna was here, Pat had told her he’d decided to be single, that he’d finally realised he was happiest on his own. He’d had a few live-in girlfriends since Anna, and she’d met one of them, Lulu, when Pat and Lulu came to Sydney for a friend’s wedding. After a few wines, Lulu had confided in Anna that she was planning to leave Pat, and go to live in Bali.

‘Anna’s an old friend.’ Pat climbed the steps and rubbed Sabine’s bare shoulder. ‘She stayed here almost twenty years ago.’

Anna waited for him to say who Sabine was but he bent to retrieve a peg from the floor and clipped it on the line.

‘Everything’s grown so much,’ Anna said. ‘The trees, I mean. You used to be able to see down the valley and the big white farmhouse there and the cows coming in to be milked and from up the top you could see to the ocean, I guess you can’t do that now . . .’ Her mouth dried up. She was rambling.

‘Oh?’ Sabine reached down to the basket and shook out a damp tea towel. ‘I made a pot of tea if you want a cuppa.’

Anna smiled. ‘I’d kill for a cuppa.’ She squeezed Charlie’s hand, which was damp and a bit limp.

Sabine offered a flicker of a smile and pegged up the tea towel.

Pat opened the door and gestured for Anna and Charlie to enter. The kitchen was as Anna remembered it: a big old woodstove cooker against the far wall and a round table under the window. Pat disappeared into his room and came out with a faded blue sarong. Anna knelt and wrapped it around Charlie’s waist. The girl touched the knot then stepped away and wandered around the room, running the fingers of her good hand over the open shelves and the low couch by the wood stove, the fringed end of the sarong trailing on the floor.

Anna dropped onto a chair at the table. She was fuzzy with exhaustion and relief, and just wanted to lay her head down on the table and close her eyes for few moments, but Pat pulled up a chair and poured her a cup of tea from the green teapot. Sabine had disappeared from the verandah and the clothes on the line moved in the breeze. Pat sloshed milk into her cup then slid it across to her. Cream formed fatty globules on the surface of the tea; she watched them float across the cup, and wondered when he’d ask why she’d turned up out of the blue and who Charlie was.

Pat said, ‘Would you like something to drink, Charlie?’

Charlie stood by the stack of firewood, watching Pat with that narrow-eyed, unblinking gaze. She shook her head and slid down to sit on the floor by the stove, her outstretched legs splayed, her eyes still fixed on Pat.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked the girl.

Charlie nodded and Anna’s gut tightened. Why hadn’t she thought to offer Charlie a drink or food? She stood, her chair scraping on the floor, and poured Charlie a glass of water from the tap. The girl drank thirstily.

Pat stood up. ‘Anna? Hungry?’

‘Oh. I should be but I’m not.’ She just needed to sleep.

She sat on the floor beside Charlie, the timber boards cool under her. ‘How are you going?’ she asked quietly.

Charlie glanced at her, then went back to watching Pat. Perhaps she was afraid of him.

Anna whispered, ‘We’re safe here. That’s why we’re here. To keep you safe. I’ll look after you. I won’t leave you alone.’