The New Girl (Downside) (6 page)

‘Did he say his name?’

‘No.’

‘What did he look like? Was he tall? Well-built guy?’

‘No, he was short. Sort of round face. He looked... I don’t know... like he wasn’t telling the truth. He asked me to let him into your room, he’d find the thing and just
go. I said no ways, he must speak to you.’

‘Thanks, Ma.’ Whoever the fuck it was, it’s definitely—

Oh, fuck. Duvenhage. Of course. Ryan had completely forgotten about the flash drive. He feels in his pocket. The little dove is still there where he stuffed it earlier today. ‘Was he
wearing a grey suit, maybe?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Fuck, how could Ryan have been so stupid? He slumps down at the kitchen table and stares at his toast. He should have known Duvenhage would miss something like that. The first thing Ryan used to
do when he started up his computer was stick in a back-up drive. And why had he filled in his real address on the job application in the first place? Who does that? This is getting out of hand. The
things he’s taken before have always been completely anonymous. Now this compulsion is directing him to do dangerous things. Steal from his boss, for Christ’s sake. And then the kid.
Going back into Julie’s house for no reason at all. He’s never done anything that risky before; he could have been arrested, for fuck’s sake. Julie knows exactly who he is and
where he works. There was no reason, he knows, except he was angry with the kid.

He was angry with Duvenhage too, speaking to him like that, and Ryan just had to nod and smile and suck it up. He can’t let it get out of control. Two items in a single day. It’s as
if he’s trying to sabotage his life; as if his own fucking mind is trying to destroy him.

‘Are you all right?’ Ma Beccah asks.

Ryan realises he’s sitting there, his hand clasped over his mouth. ‘Yes, sorry,’ he tells her. He tries to shake himself out of it. If there’s any chance of him keeping
his job, he’s got to replace the drive back in Duvenhage’s office without him noticing. And he needs his job to keep any hope of living with Alice again. It’s school assembly
first thing, so he can do it then.

But if Duvenhage’s so keen to get that drive back, there might be something of value on it. There are different ways of looking at this problem. How badly does Duvenhage want it back?

‘Hey, Ma Beccah. Do you have a computer I can use?’

‘No, but Fransie next door lets me use his when I need to send an email or go online. I’m sure he won’t mind if you ask him.’

‘Okay, thanks.’

Fransie next door is not the first person Ryan would like to visit. The situation there is weird. Fransie and his alcoholic dad living there together in that filthy, dilapidated house with
Fransie’s little girl, Tess. No mom, no auntie, no nothing. He’s seen Tess playing in the front yard a couple of times when he gets back from work. She told him that she’s ten,
that she goes to Ridgefield Primary, central Malvern’s run-down government school. She’s sweet and polite, almost too polite. There’s just a bad feeling about it. But Ryan’s
in a rush and he has little other option at this time of night. He goes to his room and scratches through a desk drawer until he finds the back-up drive he used to use at work, takes a deep pull
from the Three Ships in his backpack, then heads over to Fransie’s house.

The rusted metal gate squeals as he pushes through it redundantly. He could just as easily step over it. Fransie’s father is sitting in a wicker chair on the paint-peeling veranda in his
usual stained wife-beater. His eyes follow Ryan as he climbs the six steps and crosses the veranda to the front door.

‘Evening,’ says Ryan, and the old man grunts.

Ryan knocks at the door, and after a minute Fransie comes out, scanning ahead of him before smiling and opening the door wider. ‘Hey, brother. What can I do for you?’

‘Hi, Fransie. I’m Ryan from next door.’ He holds out his hand and Fransie gives it a limp, distracted shake; his small hand is rough and dry.

He narrows his eyes at Ryan. ‘Ja, bru, I know.’

‘I’m sorry to bug you so late, but... I have a thing.’ Ryan’s about to launch into a lie about needing a document for work but feels less comfortable lying to a man like
Fransie than to the middle-class suckers over the hill. His tribe, who he understands much better. ‘I wonder if you can copy this drive onto this one.’ He displays the little flash
drive. ‘Ma Beccah says you have a computer.’

Fransie snorts back a laugh. ‘Sure thing, brother. You don’t mind waiting out here? Keep my pa company, hey?’

‘Of course. Thanks.’

Ryan’s relieved not to be invited in. He’s unsettled enough as it is, and he wouldn’t want to see what it’s like inside. He sits down on the top step of the veranda,
thinking about Tess, what it must be like to stay here, wondering about where her mother is, when the girl appears out of an overgrown thicket at the side of the house like a spirit summoned.
She’s still wearing her school uniform, which is as grubby as her face. Her hair is tangled with leaves and twigs.

‘Hello, Mr Ryan,’ she says.

‘Been exploring?’ he says.

She laughs.

The old man grunts behind Ryan. She looks up at him and shrugs. She doesn’t appear to be scared of him, that’s something at least. But then the door opens and her face freezes and
she looks down at her shoes.

‘Here you go, brother.’ Ryan stands and Fransie passes the drives back to him.

Without a word or a glance, Tess slips up the stairs past Ryan and into the house. Something dark starts uncoiling inside him. He needs a drink.

Tara sits slumped at the kitchen counter, absently toying with the mug of coffee she made over an hour ago. It’s going on for seven thirty – usually the most
chaotic time of her day – but she hasn’t yet showered or even brushed her teeth.

The stench of burnt oil still lingers in the kitchen. Fortunately, Stephen managed to turn off the heat and throw a tea towel over the pan before any real damage was done to the stove or
surrounding units, but he left the ruined pot on top of the dishwasher, where it still sits in silent accusation.

Not that she’s worrying about that right now. She’s got other things on her mind.

She spent most of the night obsessively clicking on that photograph – zooming in and out, freeze-framing on the baby’s face, the sewn-shut eyes, the little pursed mouth looped with
thread. Could it be some kind of perverse joke, some bastard screwing with her mind? But who? It can’t be Martin – if the infant in the pic isn’t real (and she’s still not
sure it isn’t), it’s been photoshopped – and while Martin may be a mendacious little shit, he doesn’t have the skill to pull that off. There’s Martin’s mother,
of course, a woman who can hold a grudge for Africa, but Tara can’t see Olivia doing something like this. It’s too passive-aggressive. There’s too much attention to detail.

She’s aware, of course, that there are others who have an even stronger motive to cause her distress. The story is still up there on the internet, including a detailed transcript of the
court case, but as far as she knows, no one from the old days, with the exception of her mother, knows that she’s holed up in a Joburg suburb, thousands of miles away from New Jersey.
She’s glad she ignored her feminist principles and took Stephen’s surname; it makes her harder to trace.

But what if it
isn’t
some kind of sick joke? What if the baby in the photograph
is
real? After all, this Batiss is undoubtedly foreign, and if he or she is a bereaved
parent longing to own a replica of a possibly deceased child, could the mutilation be some kind of North African or Middle Eastern burial practice she’s never heard about before? Or perhaps
it’s even worse than that – some sick fetish. A while ago, her sister sent her a link to a site showcasing pictures of a novelty Voldemort Reborn, complete with snake-like eyes and
red-veined skin. That turned her stomach, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Batiss’s photograph.

So the response she’d written, ‘Is this a joke? If so, I’m not laughing,’ remains unsent in her drafts folder.

She should really get moving, make sure Martin is up and dressed, but instead she continues to swirl her spoon around the mug, trying to ignore the sick throb of what she hopes isn’t the
beginning of a migraine.

She hears a door slam, the flush of a toilet. The thump of feet in the hallway.

Martin slinks into the kitchen, scowls when he sees her. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Left early.’ Tara can’t actually remember Stephen leaving for work this morning, although she has a vague recollection of him muttering something about an early meeting.

‘Aw
what
? But I need him to sign something for me.’

‘Why didn’t you ask him to do it last night?’ She knows she’s picking a fight, but after the night she’s had she can’t be bothered to tiptoe around a
twelve-year-old, however big the chip on his shoulder.

‘I forgot.’

‘Well, I can sign it, can’t I? What is it?’

He pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his bag, hands it over reluctantly. Tara smoothes it out on the counter. The text is slotted around an anthropomorphic soda-pop can that appears to be
leaping for joy, a speech bubble leaking out of its mouth with the words ‘Quizzes! Prizes! Body Art!’ She scans the rest of the flyer:

‘You seriously want to go to this?’ Tara asks. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Martin would be into. Ever since Tara’s known him, his world has revolved around
rugby, gangsta rap and violent computer games – perfect ingredients for a thug in the making. This ‘Encounters’ flyer smacks of the kind of thing the hokey religious groups used
to post on the notice board at Raymond Scheider Primary, luring the kids into abstinence programmes and the like with the same dubious promise of FREE FUN with a capital F.

But then again, she thinks, maybe if the little shit found Jesus he’d get off her back.

‘Are you going to sign it or not?’ he says.

‘Who gave this to you?’

‘What do you care?’

‘And you want to go today?’

‘It’s every day. That’s what it says. You can read, can’t you?’

She scrawls her signature, hands it over. He snatches it out of her hand.

‘Aren’t you going to say thank you?’

‘Whatever, bee-atch,’ he mumbles.

Something inside her snaps. ‘You know what, Martin,’ she says, unable to stop herself. ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself.’ The savage glee she feels at the sight of
his stunned expression only lasts momentarily, but it’s almost worth it.

It doesn’t take long for him to recover. ‘You can’t talk to me like that!’

‘Looks like I just did.’ Tara realises that part of her really is enjoying this.

‘I’m telling on you!’

‘Get your stuff together. We’re going to be late.’

His eyes narrow. ‘Mom says you’re a freak. She says you’re sick.’

‘Does she?’ Tara tries to feign disinterest, but she can feel a familiar knot of tension starting at the base of her skull, suspects that it will claw its way up to join the headache
simmering at her temples.

‘She says that you only make those stupid ugly babies because you can’t have your own.’ His voice is rising, getting shriller. ‘She says you lost your baby because you
deserved to, that you stole Dad because you’re a bitch. A slut. A stupid, ugly, fat, American cu—’

Her hand flashes out before she can stop it. He staggers back, ugly red splotches appearing on the pale skin of his left cheek.

Oh shit, she thinks. Oh God. What now? ‘Martin, I...’

Tears bubble in his eyes. ‘I hate you!’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘I’ll get you for child abuse! I can do that! I can call Childline. I can call—’

‘You can do all of these things,’ she says, trying to inject calm into her voice. ‘But it will make you late for school.’ As if that’s going to make any difference,
she thinks. Except, oddly enough, this does seem to quieten him.

‘Whatever,’ he mumbles. He turns away, kicks at his bag.

‘You ready to get going?’ she asks brightly. The mark on his cheek is fading, thank God. She can’t have hit him that hard after all.

‘Where’s my lunch?’

Goddammit
. She’s forgotten to make him his packed lunch – a chore she usually completes the night before. She digs in her handbag, finds herself handing him a fifty-rand
note for the tuck shop, five times too much. Awesome. First child abuse, now bribery.

She waves him towards the front door.

Martin turns around and shoots her a hate-filled look. ‘You’re going to be sorry,’ he says.

I’m already sorry, Tara thinks. But all she says is, ‘Let’s go.’

She sits in the car in a shady corner of the staff parking lot. Although her headache hasn’t actually morphed into a migraine, she’s feeling that same sense of
detachment and nausea that comes over her just before the black spots start dancing in the corners of her eyes. Probably just stress. The drive to school wasn’t pleasant. She tried to make
conciliatory, over-cheery conversation, but Martin spent the journey in a fug of resentment, not even kicking at the back of her seat. She rests her forehead against the steering wheel.

Did she actually hit him?

In all the years she was teaching, she never once struck a child; never even came close. Even in the early days, when she was forced to take a series of positions as a teaching assistant in the
rougher districts, in schools equipped with metal detectors and their own security guard squads. Schools where six-year-olds used the word ‘motherfucker’ more frequently than they said
‘please’, where the older kids mouthed ‘bitch’ at her when she passed them in the corridors.