Sliver Moon Bay: The Looking (8 page)

Well, the place is only quiet.
I’m back in Drake’s bedroom. Again. Still, I’d better look under
the bed, behind the blanket box. Just in case.

‘Sarah. Honey, what are you
doing?’

God, she scared me. I’m
crawling from under the bed, double quick.

‘I’m just looking, Mum. You
know how she likes to play Hide and Seek.’

Lilian’s leaning on the
doorframe. She’s in her nightie, barefoot. Trembling.

‘You should be resting,
Mum.’

‘I can’t sleep. I keep thinking
of all the places we haven’t looked.’

I nod. We hug. Lilian begins to
cry, hangs onto me. She feels like a pile of dead leaves.

‘Me too, Mum. Don’t cry,
please. She will turn up. Soon.’

‘I know. I know. I know,’ she
sobs.

And I take her away.

We get home and I put her to
bed. Then I go outside, sit under the window to wait for news.

But there isn’t any. Chris
returns with Detective Martin. Chris looks defeated but the Missing
Children Expert has a plan. Involving me. Well, obviously, I’ll do
my bit. I’m ready to go down to the beach. Just me and Chris and
the big town detective. He wants me to show him exactly how
Starling and I got there, what we did and where we went; he wants
me to show him everything we would normally do. It’s awkward. But
we need to know. We need to re-enact real life so I’m taking my
tricycle as I normally would. Except Starling isn’t here, sitting
in her basket behind me, looking like a giant lollipop with her big
round helmet and her long skinny neck. She isn’t there and it
doesn’t feel right. But I’m going through the motions. Who knows,
something might come out of this.

The men follow me on foot.
They’re keeping up pace though I’m pedalling, I think, a little
faster than I normally would cause Starling isn’t here to weigh me
down. We pass old Drake’s gate, we’re snaking along the fence line
like we always do. But it’s no fun now I haven’t Assassin to dodge.
It’s very quiet, down here under the treetops, even with my wheels
crunching leaves and snapping twigs underfoot. It’s a very
conspicuous sound, I would think, but Detective Martin isn’t saying
much about it. Nothing at all, actually, and I can see Chris is
sweating. Why? It isn’t hot. It’s windy. Howling, above the
treetops. I think Chris was wrong about the favourable weather.
It’s definitely taken a turn for the worse. It’s not a day Starling
and I would chose to spend on the beach. The surf is up. The birds
not even circling. They’re hiding in the dunes. It’s not a day for
a living soul to be out.

Detective Martin scans the
beach. He’s looking at me, at Chris. He’s not asked one question.
Keeps on walking about, poking his foot in the sand, like a
confused stork. I’m really wasting time here. I want to be excused
from this futile exercise.

We walk along the shoreline.
The waves are coming in and falling back the way they usually do. I
walk close to the water, to make sure my footsteps are erased. The
two men are ahead of me now, looking towards the dunes where
Captain Josh is scouring the bushes, with a fresh search party.
Will today be the day?

24

The wind has shifted. It’s
lifting the sand, like a sheet. It looks like half the dune is
sliding towards us. Huh. A sand avalanche. I haven’t seen one for a
long, long time. Starling has never seen one. I could cry. Starling
should be here, seeing this. But the sand stops unimaginatively,
half way down the slope, piles into a fat roll, settles there. It’s
made a new step. It’s going to make climbing easier. Then Captain
Josh emerges on top of the cliff. He’s waving. He wants us to come
up. Chris breaks into a run, climbing up the newly settled sand,
his boots squeaking. Starling should be here for this; she’d love
the funny little ducky noise the boots are making but this isn’t
good news. I’m right behind Chris and I can see, even from here,
Captain Josh’s frowning. He’s looking worried, Captain Josh is, and
I don’t know what to expect.

‘Do you recognize this?’

Chris nods, says nothing. He’s
staring.

Captain Josh looks at me. He’s
sweating all over. I can smell him, even though I’m not that close.
I don’t want to get any closer to him. Or the small plastic bag
he’s holding in his right hand, towards Chris, at eye level. It’s
see-through so we can see clearly what’s inside. Captain Josh has
Starling’s pink dress in a zip lock bag.

‘She wasn’t wearing this. She
was in h-her p-pyjamas. Where did you g-get th-this?’ Chris’s teeth
are chattering. He’s shaking, from head to toe.

‘We found it in your father’s
garbage, Chris.’

Chris makes a sound. I’ve never
heard a sound like that, ever. The sound is followed by a thin
ribbon of projectile vomit. It hits Captain Josh’s boots. It
happens so quickly that nobody moves.

25

It was a truly awful moment. In
so many ways, but mainly cause nothing got solved. We were all
confused. Chris couldn’t get his head around it. He kept saying how
he didn’t want Lilian to know. It’ll kill ‘er, it’ll kill ‘er, he
kept repeating. They made him sit down, on the ground, and me
beside him. So I sat there with Chris and for the first time, in a
long time, I felt sorry for him. I wanted to say something
comforting to him but I couldn’t find the words. What could one
say? That things will be alright? What good would that do?
—Exactly. So we sat there as we were. Alone. Together. As
always.

Then Detective Martin took the
bag from Captain Josh. They huddled together, a few steps from us,
with their backs all hunched so we could see nothing, of their
expressions, hear nothing, of what they talked about. I didn’t
care. I don’t think they knew any more than we did. So we all
imagined, collectively and separately, different things that might
or might not have occurred. It really was very draining.

Course, this was just the tip
of the iceberg. Lilian had to be told, and Detective Martin was the
one who told her. Chris couldn’t face it. Chris wouldn’t even go
near the caravan. Sat in Captain Josh’s car, wrapped in a blanket,
teeth chattering.

So I was the last man standing.
I stood beside Detective Martin, knocking on the door, to deliver
the dreadful news to Lilian. Course, I was a mess but somebody had
to hold it together. For all of our sakes. I stood there, waiting
for Lilian to open the door, and counting elephants. It’s something
Starling and I did when we hid in our room while Chris and Lilian
argued, back in the day.

One elephant, two elephant,
three elephant… She opens the door. She’s in her bathrobe, looking
sleepy, looking hazy. She’s been smoking, all sorts.

Detective Martin tells her. He
doesn’t have the bag with him but she believes him. She sways in
the doorway. Says she knew; she had long suspected the old man had
something to do with Starling going missing. She’d had a feeling,
you know. Lilian’s clutching at her throat, pulling at the lapels
of Chris’s robe. She’s looking straight at the detective. Course,
he reads into it. It’s his job to. He tells her that he will speak
with Drake, at the hospital right now as soon as he can get there—
but Lilian cuts him off with a laugh. She laughs, emitting a dry,
percussive sound, like bullets sinking into metal. In the next
breath she stops.

‘Dude,’ she waves her cigarette
dangerously close to his thin, dehydrated nose, ‘the old fuck’s
just died.’ She slams the door in his face.

26

So they turn old Drake’s inside
out. The cabin, the shed, the kennel. No more RIP Assassin. The
dog’s dug up. Sniffed over. Reburied. Meanwhile, in the house,
chaos reigns supreme. Things are sent off for analysis. The sheets
off Drake’s bed. Towels. Some kitchen utensils. A missing
pillowcase causes a storm of speculation, random thoughts shooting
all over the universe, then gurgling down a black hole. It’s all a
bit mad. Like they’re going to find Starling here. Seriously? The
old dude would just leave her lying about amongst the dope? It
doesn’t make sense. She’s gone. Gone to Heaven. So what does all
this matter? —Exactly.

The old fuck’s dead. We won’t
be able to get our pound of flesh. That’s the only thing that would
have made a… something of a difference. To somebody. Not to me
cause I just want Starling back. Not to Lilian. She doesn’t know
what’s going on; sleepwalking now, even during the day. But Chris
is full of energy, full of rage. He hovers like a humming bird,
even when he’s still. It’s scary. I know where this is going. This
can’t last. This man is not long for this world, is my guess. So
I’m trying my best not to add to his pain. I’m being a good girl.
I’ve even gone back to school where I’m being noticed, again. I’m
used to it now. I won’t be chased away. There’s no point going
anywhere else. With parents like mine, word would spread everywhere
regardless of how far we’d go.
Their little girl’s missing. The
weirdo grandad did it. Ahhh, no wonder…
people would whisper,
pity us, imagine they could understand how it feels. And that can’t
be cause their little girl is not missing. So nobody has the
faintest how this feels. How you cling to— At least here, we’re
close to her. I can still go to the beach. To think about her. So
we might as well keep going with our useless lives here.

The days go by, somehow. In
bed, I dream of Starling. It’s draining. It is. I’d rather see
Fairy but she’s sulking. She hasn’t come to me since. And she
screamed at me then. So she wasn’t herself. So I’m hoping we could
make up. Go back to where we started. But she’s not coming. She’s
having issues with all of it. Like I used to. But it’s all been
sorted now and Starling comes instead. At least I’m no longer
alone. My little birdie keeps me company.

‘
One efelant, two efelant,
tree efelant, sick efelant… Leady or not, Salah, hele I
come!

I’m stomping around the house.
Course, I see she’s under the table, covering her eyes. She can’t
see me so I can’t see her, is what she’s thinking. Okay. Let’s give
her some giggles.

‘
Hide, hide, hide, little
birdie! I’m coming to get you.’

—

‘Not now. I don’t feel well…
Chris, don’t!’

Oh dear.

‘We’ll… Lil. I love you.’

Oh Lord. One elephant, two
elephant, three elephant…

‘Lilian, please...’

‘Don’t touch me!’

—

The door opens. He exits the
caravan. Bang! He enters the truck. Bang! He’s reversing down the
path. It’s a stupid move, dangerous in the light of day and we’re
smack bang in the middle of the darkest night. Ah, well. What will
be will be.

Next door, behind the kitchen
space, in her bedroom space Lilian twists open her bottle of little
magic pills. She takes out, let’s see, one two maybe even three.
She’ll need them. She drinks from her water bottle, swallows.
Noisily her little friends are going down. Soon her pain will all
be danced away, in Oblivion. She puts the bottle down. One
elephant, two… she’s unconscious, I’ll bet. Good for her. It’s the
only way her Starling will appear. To her.

27

Chris doesn’t come home.
Instead, there’s a call from Captain Josh. He tells Lilian Chris is
being interviewed, at the police station in town. He will be there
for a while.

Lilian tells me. She’s
matter-of-fact about it. It’s just another interview, like before,
you know. Yeah, I know, I just nod. She’s okay with it. She’s gonna
take a pill and chill. So I’m left alone. Which suits me fine. I
like silence, now that it’s just the two of us, mostly. Cause there
really isn’t much to say. Everything that could be said in this
situation pretty much has been said and there is only so much
comforting each other you can do. And you’re always waiting, for
something that never arrives. You want your birdie back but it’s
gone now, flown the coop. And it’s not coming back.

Lilian goes to lie down. I walk
down to the beach.

Today, Sliver Moon Bay looks
spectacular. I walk from one tip of the bay to the other, like we
used to with Starling. Course, back then we used to run, right
along the edge. It’s not the same without her so I’m just walking
now. The waders don’t even notice me. It feels different here.
Kinda boring. Nobody’s building sandcastles, nobody’s spying. The
boredom of it, here, alone, makes me tired. So l lay me down and
close my eyes.

‘
Come find me,
Salah!’

Starling’s knobbly head pokes
out of the bushes.

‘
Find me!’

I will. I will find you, my
little bird.

‘
I’m coming, Starling, ready
or not!’

The setting sun gets inside my
eyes. It tickles me behind my eyelids, reminding me that I’m not
dreaming. I’m not. She’s here somewhere and she must be found. It’s
really silly how we’ve all given up on my little birdie. And that
is so wrong. I don’t really care how we do it. I just want her to
be found. But there’s nobody looking anymore. This has to
change.

I get home and find Lilian
conscious. She’s making me spaghetti, stirring the sauce, slumped
over the stove.

‘Mum. She’s here, somewhere
close. I know she is. ’

She looks up, looks at me like
I’m touched in the head.

‘Okay, honey. We’ll go
looking.’ She goes back to stirring the sauce.

Oh, dear. She has given up.
This is going to be harder than I thought.

Outside, lights appear.

Oh dear. Chris is coming
home.

He walks in, takes off his
jacket, walks past the dinner table to the bedroom space. Behind
the partition, the bed squeaks. I don’t think he took his boots
off. They’ll just be hanging off the bed.