Under the Midnight Sky Page 9

  I put down the typewriter and studied the bundle.

  What if it was the novel he was writing about Deepwater? I glanced over my shoulder at the door. If it were my first draft, I’d hate someone to read it without asking. I should definitely leave it. Resist temptation; do the right thing and walk away.

  I picked up the papers and flipped through them, scanning the typewritten lines. I was right; it was the Deepwater novel. Settling onto Tom’s desk chair, I started to read and was quickly absorbed. Tom told the story from the viewpoint of one of the victim’s mothers, describing her life before the abduction, and then her break-down as she crumbled under the weight of her grief. When I read her vow to find her daughter’s killer whatever the cost, my eyes filled with tears.

  Over the years, I hadn’t given a great deal of thought to Alice’s mother. I had met her, of course, on those rare days she came to collect Alice after school. All I remembered was her mousiness; the stringy hair that was neither dark nor light, the baggy clothes that swamped her slim frame, and the round pixie face so like her daughter’s – except for the deep frown lines that carved between her eyebrows. But now, sitting in Tom’s office with his fragment of novel on my knees, the understanding struck me. If Alice still haunted me, then she must haunt her mother a million times more. Visiting her in dreams. Inspiring bouts of panic, of dark regret. Stirring up memories that she would dissect and replay, over and over, until they wore thin and began to fade like snapshots in a dusty old album . . .

  I jumped to my feet. How long had I been sitting here? Tom must be on the brink of sending out a search party. I placed the typewritten pages onto the Remington, balanced the photo album on top, grabbed a couple of other things I thought Tom might need, and hoisted the clunky pile into my arms.

  Out on the verandah, Tom got to his feet and took the typewriter from me. While he positioned it on the redwood table, I got busy arranging things around it – the jar of pencils, a fresh typewriter ribbon, a bottle of white-out.

  Tom picked up his pile of papers and flipped through them. I glanced at him through my lashes. Could he tell I’d read them? Did he have a sort of sixth sense that his private writings had been violated by someone else’s eyes?

  He made a grumbling noise and shook his head, frowning at the pages. Then he tossed them onto the table and looked at me. ‘What did you think?’

  Heat flooded my neck. I started fussing over the jar of pencils, but then I sighed and met his gaze. ‘It was pretty good, actually. For a first draft.’

  ‘You think I got the tone right?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Nah, me either. I keep stalling with the mother’s point of view. It needs sensitive handling, but I’m not quite finding her voice.’

  ‘She’ll be a hard nut to crack,’ I agreed.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not sure this is my story. I’ve been working on it for over a year, and it’s just not happening. I’m not one to complain about writer’s block, but this one’s got me stumped.’

  I settled onto the seat opposite him. ‘Have you been to the gorge?’

  ‘Not for years. I was planning a trip there, before . . .’ He gestured to his legs.

  ‘When you’re off the crutches, wait for a rainy day and head out there.’

  ‘A rainy day?’

  I nodded, rubbing my arms. ‘Start with Pilliga’s Lookout, the views are stunning. Deeper into the reserve, it gets a bit, well . . . wild. It’s . . .’ I groped around for the right words to describe it. ‘On sunny days, it’s magical. Sunlight fans through the trees, and waterfalls sparkle near the river. Granite cliffs shoot up taller than skyscrapers and then plunge into dark ferny gullies. The walking tracks take you into a fairyland of mossy stone outcrops and ancient beech groves. But when it rains . . .’ I picked up the jar of pencils, suddenly fascinated by the loose shavings in the bottom. ‘You said you were there years ago?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He was watching me, frowning. ‘A camping trip with my dad. It’s what inspired me to be a writer.’

  Abandoning the pencil jar, I sat up straight. ‘Oh?’

  He opened the photo album and gestured for me to move closer. I shuffled my chair around until we were side by side, my arm gently bumping his. Tom turned the pages until he came to some photos of a young boy and a twenty-something woman. In one, the woman wore an elegant shift and had pinned her hair in a high bun reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. I touched the page, wanting to see.

  ‘That’s Mum,’ Tom said. ‘Beautiful, isn’t she? Unlike the pint-sized wretch next to her.’

  ‘Not a wretch,’ I murmured. ‘Just a normal little boy.’ Normal, although perhaps cuter than most. In one picture he stood in his school uniform with a skinned knee and black eye. In another his mother held his grubby hand – somewhat gingerly, it seemed – at the gates of a posh private school. There was another snap of a very muddy Tom grinning from ear to ear, one arm in a cast, the other cradling a football.

  ‘Accident prone, even as a kid?’

  Tom made a clearing sound in his throat. ‘I much prefer “adventurous”. But yeah, I had my moments.’ He turned another page. ‘Ah, wait. This is my favourite.’

  Tom looked about twenty, long hair to his collar, a fresh-faced young man with wild hair and woolly sideburns, and an unguarded green gaze. He had his arm around an older white-haired woman who shared Tom’s striking features. She had angled her face up to look at him, her smile wide and warm, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘That’s my gran,’ Tom said. ‘She’s still going strong. Lives in Melbourne, she’s a botanical artist.’

  ‘Talented family.’

  ‘Hmm. You’d like her, she’s had a fascinating life.’

  ‘Does she loathe being interviewed, like her grandson?’

  Tom rasped out a laugh. ‘Knowing Gran, she’d give a limb to have her picture splashed all over the newspapers.’

  ‘Maybe I should be interviewing her.’

  He slid the photo from the plastic sleeve and passed it to me. ‘Make a copy and get it back to me.’

  ‘A copy?’

  ‘Might add a nice touch to your interview. I know Gran’d be tickled.’

  ‘Aw, Tom. That’s really generous of you. A childhood picture will create a great buzz with my readers.’ In my eagerness to take the prize from him, my fingers brushed against his and I fumbled. Tom picked up the photo and placed it on my palm, and when he noticed me gazing at him, he winked. Suddenly, my heart was a galloping mess. While I sat very still trying to rein it back in, Tom went back to turning pages.

  He came to some photos of two men. Tom would have been about seventeen, the other man in his late forties, and they were standing next to a tent that didn’t seem to want to stay upright. Behind them, tall, skinny ribbon gums flanked a track leading down to the river.

  ‘You and your dad? At Deepwater?’

  ‘Yeah, check us out. A real live couple of dudes, eh?’

  Tom’s father was a square-built man with a red face, wearing jeans and a new-looking flannelette shirt. Tom wore an identical outfit, and his usual cheeky grin. Cute. The man smiled too, but his eyes were lost in shadows.

  ‘Where’s your mum? Did she take the shot?’

  ‘No, we propped the camera in a tree. Mum was never a big camper. Hated it, actually. I don’t blame her. Dad and I were both as hopeless as the other. This trip’—he tapped the photo—‘our tent fell down the minute we crawled into it, and we spent half the night trying to wrangle it back up. Next morning, Dad suggested we trek to the other side of the gorge. By mid-afternoon, we were lost.’

  ‘How did you find your way back?’

  ‘We eventually stumbled on our original trail, almost by accident, then retraced our steps. I gotta say though, navigating the wilderness is not for the fainthearted. I never thought I’d be so relieved to see our saggy old tent.’

  ‘So getting lost that day is what inspired you to write?’

  Tom shifted in his seat. ‘Not getting lost. T
his was September 1996.’

  A chill trickled along my spine. ‘Oh.’

  He nodded. ‘A couple of months after we got back to Sydney, they found the body near the campground. A local girl, wasn’t she? It was all over the papers, I read everything I could get my hands on about it. Learned about the two unknown runaways they found the year before. Those girls haunted me. I saw them every night in my dreams. I couldn’t get the vision of a girl trapped in the dense bush of the gorge out of my head. A girl buried in a shallow grave. That’s why I wanted you to ask me where I got my ideas, what inspired me. Because long after our camping trip faded to a blur, that one image stayed with me. It’s what drove me all those years.’

  ‘And this is the story you can’t write about?’

  He raised his palms and shrugged. ‘The human brain is a pretty crazy place sometimes.’

  We sat in silence, both of us gazing at the open album with its patchwork of childhood memories. Tom’s revelation about his camping trip and his consequent obsession had struck a chord in me. Tell him, a little voice urged. Tell him what you found. No one else seems to care all that much . . . but maybe he will?

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘About a week ago I was running at the old campground. I go out there most mornings. It’s a pretty trail. Anyway, I found a teenage girl. She was injured, lying unconscious under a tree.’

  Tom sat up and regarded me. ‘Was she okay?’

  I swallowed. ‘I ran to the highway and called an ambulance, but by the time we got back to the campground, she’d gone. So she must have recovered enough to make her way home. At least, that’s what I hoped. But then yesterday in town, I visited a woman whose daughter has run off. I described the girl I found, but she didn’t seem all that worried. I went to the cops, too, but because I’m not definite about the girl’s identity, they can’t do much. They want to wait for a family member to come forward, which the mother won’t do because she thinks the girl is with her dad on the coast.’

  ‘You reckon it was her at the campground?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then where is she now?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’ I let out a ragged sigh. ‘It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It might not be the same girl, I might just be overreacting.’

  ‘But you’ve got a feeling?’

  I sagged, nodding.

  Tom reached out and rubbed my arm with the back of his fingers. ‘Sometimes you just know, don’t you?’

  I nodded again. My legs began to jiggle.

  ‘Abby, are you okay? You look pale.’

  ‘All this talk of the gorge, and . . . you know. It’s given me the yips. I think I’ll go for a bit of a wander and get some air.’

  11

  The garden was still boggy, but higher up on the ridge behind the house I found an old trail that meandered away into the bush. I ran along it, splashing through puddles, my breath finding its familiar rhythm. When the trail grew too rocky to run any more, I slowed to a walk.

  Sometime later, the trail ended at a fallen tree. I climbed up onto the vast trunk and walked along until I reached its twisted root system.

  Before me stretched the north end of the reserve, a bumpy blanket of hills and valleys and shadowy trees that rolled on forever. The blue-grey river snaked through its centre, carving stony beaches and deep gullies between the vegetation. The hiss of water drifted up, bringing with it the scent of damp leaves and mossy pebbles.

  Tom’s words replayed in my mind. Sometimes you just know, don’t you? But was it a hunch that made me so sure the campground girl was Shayla Pitney? Was it a gut feeling that made me think she was in trouble that day, perhaps even running from someone who might have attacked her? Or was I simply up to my old tricks, obsessing over the past again and projecting my own fears onto the situation?

  Sometimes you just know, don’t you?

  From the moment I found her, I’d sensed something was wrong. Not just on account of her head wound, but because of the general strangeness of it all. A girl alone and injured, her hands scratched up and her knees skinned, her bare feet bruised and torn. As though she had run for miles through the bush, but why would she do that? And how had she come to be in such a remote area in the first place?

  I pushed my fingers through my hair and found the scar, then massaged the lump as though it might release the answers. But, as usual, there were only more questions.

  • • •

  Every day for two weeks I had nagged my father to let me go on the school excursion to Deepwater Gorge. I had just turned twelve and was desperate to prove that I was not the person everyone at school seemed to think I was. But for each of those fourteen days, my father bluntly refused.

  ‘I need you here to mind your brother.’

  ‘Please, Dad. All the other kids are going. It’s for a project. If I don’t go, I’ll be left out.’

  Not that I wasn’t already. While my school wasn’t exactly exclusive, the other kids all managed to turn up in uniforms that weren’t threadbare. They got new shoes when the old ones wore out, had textbooks that weren’t out of date, and schoolbags that weren’t held together with gaffer tape.

  Not that I complained. Things had been tough for Dad since my mother walked out. One morning we’d come down to breakfast and found the note. It was addressed to my father, but he was too hungover to read it so I’d done the honours.

  You drunken bastard, my mother had written. Any love I might have once had for you is dead. I’ve had my fill of your bullshit and I’m leaving. Don’t try to find me. If you do, the cops will nick you for violating the restraining order I’ve got. In a couple of weeks I’ll send for the kids as I know they cramp your selfish style. Bev

  After she left, my eight-year-old brother refused to speak about her. Instead, he started shadowing Dad, who didn’t appear to mind. If Dad drove to the shop, Duncan went along for the ride. If Dad sat on the back verandah to smoke, his little shadow would be there holding the ashtray.

  Despite my endless letters to relatives and whoever else I could think of, I was never able to trace Mum. An aunt said she’d moved to Canada. Dad never mentioned signing any divorce papers, but he must have because a distant cousin later told us that Mum had hooked up with another man and remarried.

  We never saw her again. Without her, what remained of our small family fell apart. Dad withdrew; Duncan started getting into trouble. And I just seemed to fade into the worst version of myself. Which was why I nagged so hard about the excursion. I loved orienteering, especially when combined with bushwalking. If I could show everyone at school that I was good at something, maybe even really good, then they’d see past my ratty uniform and scuffed shoes. Past the broken bag and too-long hair; past the sticky-taped glasses. Past the dad who picked me up from school in a beat-up old Lancer, reeking of beer and stale cigarettes.

  For once, they’d see the real me.

  ‘Please, Dad.’

  But my nagging fell on deaf ears.

  So when the orienteering excursion rolled around, I packed my haversack and set off on foot. I’d worked it all out the night before. Deepwater Gorge Reserve was about fifteen kilometres outside of town. If I left at dawn, I could walk there in two hours.

  But it took way longer. And by the time I got to the reserve, my school group was gone. I was sweaty and footsore, but felt sure I could catch up. So I headed along the path into the trees, using my compass to navigate northwest towards the gorge. As I walked, thunder boomed in the distance and the first spots of rain began to fall. An hour later it was drizzling. My jeans stuck to my legs, my hair hung in dripping ropes and as I searched the rain-drenched trees, my heart sank into my soggy shoes. Which way led back to the campground?

  ‘Hey, you look lost.’

  I whirled around. A man stood on the track. He wasn’t a teacher, and looked too young to be the father of any classmate. Maybe an older student who’d come along as a teacher’s aide, or someone’s big brother?

 
But as he swaggered closer, I knew he was none of those things. His jeans were dirty and the flannel shirt he wore was ragged at the collar and cuffs, clinging wetly to broad shoulders. His light brown hair was cut in a mullet, short all over the front and long down the back. He smiled, slow and wide, and my twelve-year-old heart began to kick like a wounded frog.

  His eyes.

  Blue as gems in the gloomy forest. So blue that even though I wanted to back away, even though a panicked voice in my brain was screaming at me to run, I could do nothing but stand there in the rainy glade, holding my breath. Trapped by that blue, blue gaze the way a spider traps a fly.

  • • •

  By the time I got back to the garden, my track pants were muddy and my runners sodden. I stopped under the big magnolia at the back of the house and began my post-run stretches. My skin was hot and damp and my lungs burned, but my head was clearer than it had been an hour ago.

  I did manage to run that day in the forest. To stumble away and race through the trees, mud skidding and sliding under my feet, branches whipping my face. Later, I woke in an airless place, without knowing how I got there. My head hurt and when I pressed my hand against my scalp it came away sticky. The cold darkness gobbled up my cries, and unseen things invaded the corner of my mind where the nightmares lived. But there were other memories too. Vague and disjointed, like flecks of blue sky through the clouds. A warm hand clasping mine. Being wrapped in a blanket, fussed over. The crackle of police radios. Sipping thin black cocoa so hot it burned my tongue.

  I leaned against the tree and looked up into the branches. Dots of early afternoon sunlight shimmered through the leaves. Nearby, a willie wagtail chirped her warning. In the bushes, Poe’s black tail lashed to and fro as he slunk away into the shadows.

  As the sun winked and smiled through the magnolia canopy, it seemed perfectly reasonable that my own ordeal at the gorge all those years ago was fuelling my fears for the campground girl. There was probably a more rational explanation for her injuries than the one I had dreamed up. She had doubtless recovered and gone home. And Shayla was most likely with her father, as everyone thought, having a blast with him on the coast.