Where Have You Been? (8 page)

And now Ed does believe – he believes passionately in what he does. He knows that his long consultations with women (in the main it is still women that he deals with, though this is gradually changing) about their kitchen's design, about their choices of finishes and appliances, is not really about that at all; or not just about the obvious material construction
and configuration of the fittings, but that it also involves some revelation of their essential being; of the way they think about themselves, conceive of their family life, their place in the world. Few and far between are those clients who continue to regard the kitchen as merely an efficient space for preparing meals – most, if not all, see it as the hub, the centre, of their small universe. It is the room where meals are made and partaken, where discussions are held, homework is done, life plans made and unmade. The colour schemes, the finishes, the design, every tiny element, all contribute towards the making of a good life. In his designs Ed favours an open-plan kitchen – not just a discrete food preparation area, but a space for eating and for living – a space where the entire family can gather together, even if all are engaged in different tasks. He is always faintly depressed when the best design solution he can offer (and he knows that frequently he is providing a solution to other, less tangible problems – the state of a marriage, a career, a parental relationship) is new cupboards in a poorly designed room; that he can't suggest a wall be knocked down here, a window added there, an island bench that separates without division; that he can't provide some more substantial, life-enhancing alteration.

Every change to the business has been made slowly, grudgingly, and against the better judgement of his father, but now, with Mr Middleton Senior enjoying his unexpected early retirement, and Derek and Ed far more comfortably off – indeed, prosperous – than they'd ever thought they'd be; now, finally, the years of effort are paying off and nobody's laughing, no one's scornful. The returns are undeniable.

On Thursday Ed stays back late, catching up, then has a drink at the Brookie Hotel with an old mate. He rings Susan first. ‘We're having takeaway anyway,' is all she says. ‘Say hi to Phil for me. Have fun.'

Phil – a college friend, now head of HR at a local telecommunications firm – predates Susan by several years and Ed has kept him up-to-date (for counsel – he's a psych major – rather than gossip) on the Karen situation.

‘What worries me most,' he tells him now, ‘is the effect all this is going to have on the kids.'

‘Mate,' says Phil, ‘don't worry about the kids. My guess is that like most healthy children they won't give a stuff about your life as long as it doesn't interfere with their television programs, birthday presents, or Saturday morning sport.'

‘But what about the indirect stuff? The subconscious emotional stuff.'

‘What subconscious emotional stuff, Ed?'

‘You know. With Susan. Can't her internal traumas be transferred somehow?'

‘Jesus, Ed. You read too much. I'd say the main trauma here is going to be losing a shitload of money – I know that'd piss me off.'

‘But imagine how Susan must be feeling – having to meet some woman who's appeared out of – well practically thin air, claiming she's the sister that disappeared – the sister that's been presumed dead for more than twenty years. And not knowing. Not being sure. Surely that'd be a fairly traumatic experience.'

‘Ed, it'll be stressful, sure, and certainly unsettling. But traumatic? Come on. What's Susan saying? Is she anxious? Stressed?'

Ed thinks for a moment. ‘Well, initially she was pretty shaken, pretty shocked. Now she keeps saying that nothing'll happen, but she seems kind of excited. Expectant.'

‘There you go then. You're overreacting, mate.'

‘But you don't know Susan. She's, you know, I guess she's been through a lot.' Ed is not sure that he really knows Susan that well, either. To some extent Susan's internal life has always been a bit of a mystery to him, has remained opaque.
He's never quite certain whether she takes things as easily as it appears or is expertly concealing a seething pit of insecurities and unresolved anxieties.

But his friend has no such doubts. ‘Ed. Relax. It'll sort out. Stop worrying about Susan, for Christ's sake. She's a big girl. She's resilient. She'll cope. Now have another drink, mate, and let's talk about the football.'

Susan phones to invite her out to lunch. She follows the solicitor's direction to meet somewhere neutral, even though she would be far more comfortable inviting her over to morning tea. Making it easy, making it casual; making it on her own turf. But there's a saying, isn't there, a proverb, something about never inviting an enemy – or is it a vampire? – over your threshold. She wonders whether she should perhaps, when they meet, carry a clove of garlic in her handbag, wear a cross around her neck, as a precaution.

Howard Hamilton has given Susan a telephone number – it's not a home number, but the number of a Kings Cross hotel. She breathes in, makes the call.

‘Capital Hotel?' She had expected a direct line, breathes out.

‘I'm after a Carly Taylor, I believe she's...'

‘Putting you through.'

The transfer seems to take an age, but even so Susan is unprepared.

‘Hello?'

Susan seems to have run out of air. Gasps: ‘Is this Carly Taylor?'

‘Yes. Who's this?' There is nothing remarkable about her voice. It is low, pleasant. It is not at all familiar.

‘It's ... it's Susy.' Susan's voice is full of air now, the words burble out light and fast. ‘Susy Carter. Well, not Carter anymore, it's Middleton now. The solicitor gave me this number ... I thought ... he said you'd be...'

‘Susan,' she speaks slowly, almost caressingly. ‘I've been expecting your call.'

They make arrangements to meet for lunch the next day. Susan suggests a restaurant in Manly. Karen, Carly will need to catch a ferry over, but it is probably a little simpler for her than for Susan, with the kids to organise ... The other woman agrees, says she'll enjoy the ferry ride anyway. The trip north. It's been a long time. Susan is relieved – she hadn't imagined it'd be this easy.

‘I'm looking forward to it, Susan,' Carly says in her low voice. ‘Can't tell you how much. I'll see you then.'

Susan echoes the sentiment. Disconnects. Wanders about in a daze for half an hour or so. Collects Stella and Mitchell from school. Ferries them to their various after-school activities. Calls in at Coles to do some last-minute shopping. Retrieves the children, takes them home.

It's not until much later, when she's preparing dinner, chopping carrots into the sweet little scalloped shapes that Stella loves, that it occurs to her. Carly called her Susan. It was only when she went off to college (part of every adolescent's quest to remake themselves, she guesses now), that she started to introduce herself as Susan, to be known by her full name. Before that, all through her childhood, her family – her mother, her father, Karen – called her Sukey. Occasionally she got Susy or even Sue. But never Susan.

She is helping the children with their homework when Ed gets home from work. He opens a bottle of wine, pours two glasses, sits down at the table with them. Susan smiles her thanks, goes back to Mitchell's sums.

‘Well?' Ed looks tired and anxious.

‘Well what?'

‘So did you talk to her?'

‘Uh huh.' She can see that this conversation, like all their conversations lately, is taking on certain characteristics. ‘Sixty, Mitch. Half of sixty.' Reluctant, half-hearted, frequently distracted on Susan's part.

‘Well?' Increasingly frustrated, even a little desperate on Ed's.

‘Well what? Stella's reading is coming along so well, Ed. Show Daddy, Stell.' He listens patiently to his daughter's halting, but enthusiastic, narration. Then, quietly, urgently:

‘Oh, come on Susan. Was it her?'

‘I guess so.'

‘What do you mean you
guess
so? Couldn't you tell?'

‘I don't know. We only spoke for a few minutes. She was just a voice on a phone.'

‘So what did you say?'

‘Nothing much ... We arranged to meet.'

‘Where?'

‘A restaurant in Manly. For lunch.'

‘When?'

‘Who are you going out with, Mummy?' This from Stella, who misses nothing.

‘Just a friend, darling. No one you know.'

‘Oh.' And is easily satisfied. Unlike her father.

‘When?'

‘No, Mitch. Count down properly. Seventeen minus nine. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight. The answer's eight.' It is becoming increasingly evident to Susan, even at this early stage of his schooling, that Mitchell has inherited her own stubborn resistance to all things mathematical, and is particularly obtuse when it comes to all but the most basic problems of subtraction. ‘You can use your fingers if you have to, darling.'

‘When, Susy?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘Mum? I need help again. Eighteen minus twelve?'

‘Ask your father, Mitch. I've got to get dinner.' It is not hard to find an excuse, easy to short-circuit any discussion. There are always things to do. Ways to keep busy.

‘Try counting up, sweetheart,' she can hear Ed, patient man, contradicting her earlier instruction. ‘Count up from twelve, not backwards, it's much easier.'

She realises, and not for the first time, that for Ed, everything – even absence – has its positive side. That Ed will always manage to find a way to count up instead of down.

Susan waits until Ed has gone to bed, pleads interest in a late night television show – she'll be a little while yet, don't wait up. When she hears him settle, the low growl of his snoring a guarantee of his unconscious state, that he won't wander out with anxious enquiries, she carries a chair into the hallway, climbs up and drags the box from the top shelf of the cupboard where it has been stored for years. It is taped up, the cardboard sagging and faintly dusty. She untapes the box, there in the half-dark hallway, takes out each item, slowly, hopefully: the books and trophies, the certificates, the trinkets and the beanie – but they hold no answers, no memories, no meaning.

She takes out the manila folders. The first is crammed with yellowing newspaper cuttings, all dated in a neat hand, the page numbers noted. She reads through them carefully, every one. But they hold no surprises; she remembers all these details so well.

Teen Vanishes,
shrieks the front-page headline from the
Sun. Eighteen-year-old Karen Michelle Brown disappeared last night en route to her high school formal ... Searches are being conducted.

Almost half of the page is taken up with Karen's smiling face – a copy of the same school portrait Susan passed on to Howard Hamilton, but black and white, blurred, grainy.
Friends and neighbours are being interviewed,
reads the next day's article – this time relegated to the second page.
Grave fears are held for the girl's safety.
On the third day (page six), some new evidence has come to light:
Mrs Edith Lamprati – an elderly neighbour who lives only several blocks from the missing girl's home – recalls seeing a girl answering to Karen's description at around 7.30 pm on the night in question. ‘Though it's a little hard to be sure,'
she qualifies later in the report,
‘all the young girls look alike these days...'

On the fourth day more evidence:
A school friend of the missing girl (who does not wish to be named) claims she had seen Karen with a man in a red car a few days before her disappearance. She is currently being interviewed by police.

After this, nothing but an occasional mention.
New evidence comes to nothing
(page eleven);
Grave fears for missing girl.
And a month later, the final report: a small paragraph (page eighteen):
All leads to teenager's disappearance go nowhere. Police say file to remain open.
After that, nothing.

Susan slips the brittle clippings back and opens the second folder. This contains copies of the police files. She vaguely remembers reading through these reports years ago, and knows that they contain nothing of any interest, but at this stage Susan is willing to look for signs anywhere, everywhere, between lines if necessary. As she lifts the stapled sheets from the folder two photographs slip out. They are tiny black-and-white prints, two-inch squares, with a white rim, strangely old-fashioned. They look like cut up studio proofs, though neither one has been stamped or dated. The photographs both show the same baby girl, around nine months old, propped up to sit, dressed in a pale crocheted dress, her bootie-clad feet peeping out cheekily. In one photo she laughs, clutching a wooden elephant. In the other she is empty-handed, intense,
one chubby finger under her chin. In both she looks plump and gummy and content – just as a baby should be. She is not at all familiar. Susan turns the photos over.
Karen Michelle Brown, Melbourne, March 1958
is pencilled on the back in her mother's neat handwriting.

Susan studies the photographs carefully, but the smudgy features, tonsured head, sticking-out ears, could belong to anyone. She opens the clippings file again, takes out the top cutting, with its grainy photograph. Karen at eighteen. She compares the two – but there's no evident resemblance between toddler and teen. She studies the teenage Karen's face carefully, she tries to imagine the girl in the photo twenty years on – but knows that from this point almost anything's possible. Susan thinks of herself as a teenager: physically slight, dark blonde hair, regular, if unformed, features – her grey eyes a little too widely spaced; nose short and straight; lips with their hopeful upward curve. Her thirty-year-old self is consistent with her adolescent self, if not entirely predictable. And there's no doubt she's still reasonably attractive, if rounder. But she knows from experience that it could be quite different. She's seen girls she was at school with become almost unrecognisable over the past ten years – some ravaged by all varieties of unhappiness and abuse, impossibly aged, others, ugly ducklings grown into unexpected grace, beauty. There is an almost infinite number of versions, possibilities for Susan to imagine. Karen's blonde hair could have grown darker with age, or could have been lightened; her nose could have lengthened, been broken, could have thickened over time; her ordinary, perhaps slightly oversized, lips could be newly defined by outlines and lipstick, or could have developed a cigarette smoker's pucker; her averagely sized, averagely spaced eyes could be tired and puffy, bloodshot, or could be kohled and coloured and mascaraed.