Promise (6 page)

She washed her hands at the back tap and wiped them on her boxer shorts. Inside, as she dropped bread into the toaster, someone knocked on the front door. She stood for a moment, her chest suddenly tight. She didn’t want to open the door. At the front window, she turned back a tiny corner of the curtain. It was Charlie and her mother. No sign of the man.

She opened the door slowly. ‘Hello.’

She scanned Charlie for bruises. The girl’s face was unblemished but she was wearing a too-big t-shirt and tights under a stained pink tutu. The toy rabbit was squashed under one thin arm.

Gabby chewed at her top lip. ‘Hi.’

‘Hello. Do you want to come in?’ Anna said. She wished she were dressed in proper clothes.

Gabby sat on the couch, her knees together. She had the stale-smoke reek of a heavy smoker. Charlie propped beside her mother and fiddled with the tassel on one of Anna’s cushions, her fingernails crudely painted with purple nail polish.

‘Would you like another one of those biscuits, Charlie?’

Charlie gave a small nod.

‘Say
please
,’ Gabby said. She was moving her mouth in a strange, loose way and Anna figured she was out of it.

‘Do you want a cuppa and a biscuit, Gabby?’ Anna wondered which of them would mention the police first.

‘No.’ Gabby smoothed her hands down the thighs of her jeans a couple of times.

Charlie followed Anna to the kitchen. The toast popped up as Anna knelt to give Charlie the biscuit and get a good look at her. There was a small hole in the pink bodice of the tutu. Perfectly round, with a dark melted outer edge. It had to be a cigarette burn.

Charlie gave Anna a small smile. The girl had the same sour, unwashed smell as the evening she turned up at the back door.

‘My dad likes these biscuits too,’ said Anna as she put the packet on the kitchen bench. ‘That’s why I’ve got them here.’

Charlie had lost a green stone from one of her earrings, leaving an empty metal claw in one earlobe.

Gabby appeared behind Charlie and rested her hands on her daughter’s shoulders as Charlie shoved the biscuit in, crumbs falling to the floor.

Gabby said, ‘You think something really bad happened last night.’

Anna stood up. ‘What did happen?’ Her voice shook.

‘You don’t need to worry.’ Gabby squeezed Charlie’s shoulders and flashed Anna a vacant smile. ‘Harlan has a short temper, that’s all. He just yells and slams doors. That’s all . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

‘It was very scary.’ Anna thought they probably shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of Charlie, but maybe it was good for the girl to know that someone else found it frightening.

The woman shrugged.

Charlie reached for another biscuit with those terrible purple nails.

‘Do you want a banana, Charlie?’ said Anna.

Charlie nodded and took the small banana Anna offered her.

Gabby frowned. ‘We don’t need your food.’

‘Oh, well . . . I’ve got too many bananas. She’s doing me a favour,’ Anna said. ‘Honest.’

Charlie handed the peel to Anna.

‘Gabby, you and Charlie shouldn’t have to put up with that kind of violent temper and yelling and . . .’

Gabby narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you were never yelled at.’

‘Not like that.’ Vehemence leaked into Anna’s voice and she tried to soften it by smiling.

The woman shrugged again. ‘I was yelled at all the time when I was a kid. It’s no big deal.’

Anna wondered if Gabby would be capable of biting her daughter.

Gabby nudged her daughter with her hip. ‘You’re fine, aren’t you, Charlie? Harlan’s just a grump.’

Charlie looked up at her mother, eyes wide, and kept chewing. The girl had a sheen of sweat on her forehead; she had too many clothes on for the warm morning.

Gabby said, ‘Don’t come around like that again. And
don’t
call the cops. Everything is fine. Alright?’ She did that strange thing with her lips again. ‘I’m telling you for your own good. And anyway, it makes things worse.’

Makes things worse.
What did that mean? Worse for Charlie or for Gabby?

‘Is everything really okay?’ Anna spoke quietly. ‘There are people who can help you. Places you could go.’

Gabby smiled but her voice was flinty. ‘Everything is fine. Maybe it’s
you
who needs help.’

Anna felt her face flush. She turned and dropped the banana peel into the compost bin on the bench.

Charlie tapped Anna’s hip. ‘Can I come over and play now?’ Anna could barely hear her. ‘Bring my castle?’ Her smile was stretched a little too wide.

‘Lay off it, Charlie,’ said her mother in a bored voice. ‘She’s got better things to do than play with you.’

Anna crouched, trying to ignore Gabby. ‘I have to go to work now, unfortunately.’

The girl gripped the last of the banana in her hand, and whispered, ‘Please.’

Anna swallowed. ‘Maybe one day. If it’s okay with Mummy.’ Anna glanced up at Gabby.

Gabby brushed crumbs from the front of Charlie’s tutu.

‘We’ll see. Let’s go, Chuckie.’ She gripped Charlie’s shoulder and steered her across the room and out the front door without looking back at Anna.

•

Her dad’s voice down the phone was matter of fact.

‘You did right. Just call FACS any time you’re concerned . . . I bet she’s known to them.’ He had the steady air of someone who’d dealt with this kind of thing before. ‘Just tell them what you saw. No interpretation.’

‘Alright. Thanks, Dad.’

‘Don’t be nervous about calling them. They deal with this stuff all the time.’

Was her reticence that plain? ‘No, no. I’ll call if something happens.’

‘Good on you, love.’

‘I thought maybe I’d come out to see you one weekend soon.’

‘I’d love that, but not this weekend because it’s Bill’s seventieth birthday party.’ His voice lifted. ‘Unless you want to come?’

‘Oh, that sounds like fun, but I’d rather have you to myself.’

Bill Malcolm had worked with her dad at Orange police station, and when her dad retired, they set up the self-storage business together.

‘How’s Red?’

‘Oh, well . . .’ He coughed. ‘Trevor thinks he might have a tumour. He’s going to operate . . .’ His voice trailed off.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Anna had given the kelpie to her dad ten years ago. ‘When’s the operation?’

‘In a couple of days.’

‘I’ll try and come out the weekend after this one.’

‘That would be great, love.’

T
he bus lumbered up Bondi Road and Anna turned back for a last glimpse of the dark ocean, and the creamy, nearly full moon. She was a bit drunk and a bit weepy. One of the few memories she had of her mother was holding her mum’s hand and stepping into the ocean at Bondi one summer. Anna had no sense that anyone else had been there, although the beach must have been full of people. The waves had sucked and pulled at Anna’s legs, and she still remembered how completely safe she felt with her mother’s hand around hers.

The bus passed a row of apartment blocks where most of the windows facing the road were lit up. Anna used to look at windows like these and feel a nostalgic pang for the cosy homes she imagined inside. Homes where mothers made dinner and tucked children into bed. Now, she looked at drawn curtains and wondered what they hid.

It was only ten days since she’d stood in her dark kitchen watching Harlan and his mate unload the removal van, and only three nights since Dave called the police. Harlan hadn’t been around, or at least not visible, but she’d heard Charlie crying at night, that thin babyish cry that went on and on, with no indication that Gabby got up to comfort her. That woman was laying waste to something so precious: the love between a mother and daughter. Anna and her mother had no choice, it was taken from them.

The bus pulled over and picked up a couple of teenage girls who sat in front of Anna in a cloud of vanilla perfume. Anna had met her boss, Monica, for dinner at Bondi, and over the main course, Mon recounted a long, funny story about losing her suitcase in Turkey. Then Anna had brought up Charlie. She wanted someone else’s perspective, a mother’s perspective, but after a few minutes, Monica somehow turned the conversation to the problem they were having getting a client to pay up. Mon had two kids, so Anna thought she’d be more concerned about Charlie. Perhaps it was too awful for a mother to contemplate.

That morning, while Anna watered the garden, she’d realised Charlie was watching her through the fence, her small face pressed to a gap in the palings. The girl looked peaky, even her lips were pale, and there was an awful lassitude about her.

Anna handed her the gardenia she’d intended to put on her desk at work. ‘This is for you. Have a smell.’

The girl sniffed at it and gave Anna a thin smile, and watched as Anna walked inside. It was easy to remain ignorant about what went on in other people’s homes, and city life was designed to facilitate that ignorance. But now that Anna had seen inside Charlie’s home, she couldn’t look away.

•

She let herself in her front door but didn’t turn the lights on; Harlan’s ute was parked out the front. As she brushed her teeth, she heard a rhythmic crunching noise in the backyard.

She walked through the dark house to the kitchen, and in the faint streetlight, saw Charlie in the next-door backyard, kicking at a loose paling in the fence. She seemed to be alone out there. Anna made herself go out the back door and down to the fence.

‘Charlie?’

Charlie stopped kicking. ‘I thought you weren’t here.’ Her voice wavered.

Anna squatted so she was level with the girl and whispered, ‘Has Mummy gone out?’

‘No.’ The girl’s right arm was bent and pressed to her chest.

‘Is someone home?’

Charlie whispered, ‘They won’t let me back in and I want Bunny.’ She gave the fence a half-hearted kick.

A light was on at the front of the house and the television burbled.

‘Are Mummy and Daddy inside?’

Charlie sniffed and nodded.

‘What’s up with your arm? Did you hurt it?’

She nodded. ‘It really hurts.’

‘What happened?’

She was silent for a few moments. ‘I said and said for them to let me in. Bunny’s inside.’

‘Where does your arm hurt?’

She pointed to her forearm, near the wrist.

Anna couldn’t see a thing. ‘I’m going to get a torch. It won’t be so dark out here, then.’

As Anna stood up, Charlie said, ‘He’s not my father, anyway.’

‘Harlan’s not your dad?’ Of course. Why hadn’t Anna thought of that?

Charlie shook her head, and pressed herself against the fence. Her smell was familiar to Anna now.

‘Where’s your dad?’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Mummy doesn’t know who he is.’

A car throttled up the street and for a heart-skipping moment, Anna was afraid it was Harlan. But he was already there. Just metres away, inside the house.

Anna hurried back with a torch and her mobile phone. She passed the torch over the fence. Charlie shone it around her in an arc.

‘Let me have a look at your arm.’

Anna directed the torch onto Charlie’s forearm where there was a mottled dark-red bruise the diameter of a small orange. A hot wave moved through her. Oh god. She was completely awake now, any trace of tipsiness gone.

‘That looks sore.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Can you open and close your hand, like this?’

Charlie’s little starfish hand stretched and curled, then she dropped the arm by her side.

‘How did it happen?’ Anna had an ear out for any sound of Gabby or Harlan coming down the hallway.

Charlie shone the torch around, playing it over the back of the house and then up and down the steps.

‘Down there,’ she said.

‘You hurt it on the steps?’

Charlie gave a tiny nod.

Anna rested her forehead against the fence for a moment. Had the girl been pushed down the stairs? Should Anna call the police again?

She imagined a cop like her dad turning up. Calm, kind and radiating authority. But Anna was home alone. If she called the police she’d have to go and stay with someone, like her friend Emily. Dave’s kids were at his place. And what might Harlan do to her house while she was away?

‘How long have you been out here?’ she asked.

‘Long time.’

What if they intended to leave the girl out here all night? Surely FACS would come for a child who was locked outside at eleven o’clock?

‘If Nella knocks on the door, I’m not allowed to answer,’ said Charlie.

‘Who’s Nella?’

‘In the caravan next door.’

‘Did you live in a caravan?’

Charlie nodded. ‘I wasn’t allowed to answer but Nella talked to me under the door.’

Maybe Nella had called FACS, too.

‘I might phone someone to come and talk to your mum and him about not putting you outside the house.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone who helps kids.’

Charlie gripped the torch. ‘No, no, no. I got in so much trouble when the polices came.’

‘You got in trouble?’ Anna’s gut curled. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘It was my fault.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. If he hurts you, it’s never your fault.’

‘Don’t call them!’

‘Okay. I won’t call the police.’ Anna pulled her phone from her pocket. ‘I need to take a photo of your arm, Charlie. Hold still.’

She took a quick shot but it was too dark. ‘Let me shine the torch on your arm.’ She took a second photo. ‘I want to take a photo of your leg.’

Charlie obediently turned so Anna could shine the torch on the bite mark. The two semi-circle bruises were green now. As she snapped the photo, she heard someone walking along the hallway inside Charlie’s house. The back door opened and light flooded onto the grass. Harlan stood in the doorway.

‘Where the
fuck
are you, Charlie? I told you to stay on the steps!’

Charlie dropped the torch into the grass as Anna crouched behind the fence. She could see Harlan through the fence palings; he must be able to see her. And he must see the torch shining across the lawn.

‘Get in here! Now!’