Darling Girls, page 14
None of them replied.
At first, Miss Fairchild spent every waking moment with Bianca. Unlike Rhiannon, Bianca was a placid baby. She ate and slept and was content to sit and play. At night, if she woke, she could be settled with a pat on the back. The problem with Bianca was that she didn’t like to be touched. If you tried to show her affection, she flinched or cried.
In response, Miss Fairchild showered her in kisses and hugs that were clearly unwanted. After a week of being rebuffed, Miss Fairchild started to get annoyed.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Miss Fairchild asked. ‘Why doesn’t she like cuddles?’
There were just so many ways a person could fail her, Jessica realised. Rhiannon cried too much. Bianca didn’t want cuddles. How could a foster child, who already carried his or her own trauma, ever have room in their little hearts to love Miss Fairchild the way she needed to be loved?
Five days into her stay, Miss Fairchild relinquished responsibility for Bianca like she’d done with Rhiannon. This time, Jessica, Norah and Alicia hit their stride quickly, establishing a routine for Bianca and divvying up the duties.
Bianca was collected a few days later. They all stood on the porch and waved her off. This time they didn’t need to be told that there’d be no rest until they’d restored the house to order.
More babies came. They were always girls and they all arrived in the dead of night. Some stayed for a day or two, some for a week or more, but the pattern was the same. Miss Fairchild started out caring for the child enthusiastically before becoming disenchanted. One had crossed eyes. One was overweight. One had fetal alcohol syndrome. Each time a baby came and went, Miss Fairchild became more irritated, and the girls became more tired.
‘I have been trying to figure out why I haven’t been sleeping at night,’ Alicia said as she paced the floor with a baby in arms. ‘And then it dawned on me.’
‘That’s funny,’ Norah said, stony-faced.
If it were just the fatigue they had to deal with, they might have been able to cope. Unfortunately, to add to their fun, Miss Fairchild was becoming impossible to live with. During the day she was mean, always finding reasons to criticise or obstruct them. At night, she drank. Often when they were up feeding a baby they could hear her rattling around downstairs, muttering as she threw an empty bottle into the rubbish bin.
When a baby stayed longer than a week, a social worker came to visit, usually Scott. The girls always knew when he was due, because Miss Fairchild would instruct them to clean the house from top to bottom and then stage some sort of ridiculous activity – a puzzle or a board game that they’d be playing ‘spontaneously’ when Scott arrived. Jessica didn’t know why she bothered; Scott didn’t pay any attention to them anyway. He seemed far more interested in Miss Fairchild’s wellbeing, making sure she was ‘coping’. Which would have been fine and well, except he didn’t seem to notice that she wasn’t.
23
NORAH
After briefly introducing themselves to the ‘babies’, all the women adjourned to the Port Agatha pub, which was deserted apart from the bartender and a guy watching the footy in his Richmond scarf. Despite its impressive external appearance, this was not one of those fancy, renovated pubs with fancy food to match. It was a sticky, smoky drunk-old-man pub, the kind with a dartboard, brawls and alcoholics, serving breaded meat of obscure origins.
‘Why don’t we introduce ourselves?’ Jessica said. She sat at the head of the long table of women as if she were conducting a board meeting. ‘I’m Jessica. I lived at Wild Meadows from when I was four until I was fourteen. This is Norah; she lived there from ten to thirteen. And Alicia lived there from twelve to thirteen.’
‘I thought we were introducing ourselves,’ Alicia said.
Jessica ignored her.
‘I’m Rhiannon,’ said the woman with dreadlocks and fingerless gloves. ‘I was at Wild Meadows for two weeks when I was an infant.’
Norah blinked. ‘I remember you. You cried all the time. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
‘Norah!’ Jessica admonished her.
Rhiannon just laughed. ‘That’d be right. In fact, the story goes that the whole reason I went into foster care at all was because I cried so much my mum went to the neighbours’ place to have a beer and left me alone to cry it out. She came back an hour later and the police were there. A delivery person had showed up and heard me crying, and when no one came to the door he called the cops.’ She sipped her beer. ‘The police took me to Wild Meadows and Mum had to do a parenting course. She still maintains that I should have been forced to take a sleeping course.’
‘I’m with your mum,’ Norah muttered, reaching for the bowl of nuts on the table.
‘So after two weeks you went home?’ Alicia said.
Rhiannon nodded. ‘They were the only two weeks I ever spent in foster care. I grew up in the next town, so we often drove past Wild Meadows when I was a kid, and Mum would threaten me and my sisters, saying that’s where we’d go if we didn’t behave.’ She laughed fondly. ‘A detective rang me yesterday. It was a courtesy call to let me know what was happening before it hit the news, because obviously I can’t remember anything about my time there. But I thought I’d come anyway, see what I could find out.’
‘I’m Zara,’ the next girl said. She was petite with pale skin, blue eyes and mousy brown hair braided and wrapped around her head like a headband. ‘At least, that’s the name my mum and dad gave me; they don’t know what I was called in foster care. My parents were told nothing about my previous life other than that I’d been living at a foster home in Port Agatha. Then last night I saw the newspaper article and I came straight-away. I don’t suppose you guys recognise me?’ She looked at them hopefully. ‘I mean, you probably don’t, but I’d love to know anything about my life before.’
‘There’s something familiar about you,’ Alicia said.
Norah agreed. But she couldn’t place her. And when the bartender approached, Norah stopped trying and decided to look at him instead. He had brown skin, a mop of black curls and – Norah felt faint at this – a moustache.
‘Are these your dogs?’ he said to Norah as he put their drinks down on the wooden table. A gin and tonic for Alicia, a lemonade for Norah, a soda water for Jessica. The other three women were all drinking beer.
Automatically, Norah rose up to her full indignant, defensive self. She was preparing to trot out her service-dog spiel when he squatted down and began patting them all vigorously.
‘They’re gorgeous,’ he said. ‘My Australian shepherd is out the back. Maybe I could take these guys out to have a play with him? It’d be good for him to have some company.’
The bartender grinned at her, revealing a slight gap between his front teeth. Norah was so busy ogling him, she failed to register his question.
‘So? Can I take them outside to play?’ he repeated.
‘Oh,’ Norah said. ‘Sure. Thanks. Okay. I love your moustache.’
She felt . . . flustered. Norah couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt flustered.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Alicia asked.
‘Shut up,’ Norah replied.
‘Shh,’ Jessica hissed, as the last girl began to speak.
‘I’m Bianca,’ she said. ‘I got a list of all my foster-care placements recently – all sixteen of them – and Wild Meadows was one of them. I don’t remember it, though. I also had a call from the cops yesterday.’
Bianca. With the eye injury, courtesy of her stepfather.
Bianca didn’t ask if they remembered her. Norah was glad. She gulped her lemonade.
‘So,’ Zara said, when the introductions were complete, ‘any idea who the bones belong to?’
‘I spoke to the cops this morning,’ Rhiannon said, ‘and they were still waiting for forensics to give them more info about the body. Apparently when the bones are old it can take a while.’
‘Do you think one of the foster kids did it?’ Bianca asked.
‘There wasn’t anyone else,’ Norah said. ‘Just us – and the babies.’
‘Well, did you guys kill anyone?’ Zara asked, looking from Jessica to Norah to Alicia.
Everyone laughed. Except Zara, who was looking at them expectantly, waiting for an answer.
‘I’ll get another round,’ Norah said.
She put her hand out for Jessica’s credit card. It was getting late. Their dinner plates had been finished and collected.
Zara was like a TV-show detective looking desperately for answers in the plainly obvious. Rhiannon and Bianca were less intense, but still curious. Unfortunately, there was no information to share. Nothing to know.
The only thing Norah was curious about was the bartender.
‘This round’s on me,’ Alicia said, intercepting Jessica’s card and placing her own card in Norah’s hand. She leaned closer to Norah. ‘The bartender keeps looking at you.’
‘Shut up.’
‘He looks familiar,’ Alicia said. ‘I think we went to school with him? Avish or –’
‘Ishir!’ Norah cried, slapping the table so hard that Jessica’s drink tipped over.
‘Norah!’ she cried. ‘For God’s sake!’
But Norah was already beelining for the bar. ‘Ishir!’
Ishir, who’d been bent over looking for something in the fridge, stood up straight on hearing his name. A tea towel was slung over his shoulder.
‘I know you,’ Norah said triumphantly.
It took a minute, but recognition finally dawned in Ishir’s eyes. ‘Oh yeah . . . I know you too.’ He grinned. ‘Nerida, right?’
‘Norah,’ she corrected. ‘With an “h”.’
But even as she said it, a memory was coming at her. ‘Wait . . . did you work at the grocery store?’
‘That’s me. My parents owned it. They still do. And this pub.’
‘You probably won’t remember this,’ Norah started, and to her delight, he rested his elbows on the bar, listening eagerly.
Miss Fairchild had dispatched Norah to the shop to collect her face cream and a few other things. It was miraculous, really, how she always had enough money for such things when so much else – like fruit for their lunchboxes – wasn’t in the budget.
It was no surprise she’d asked Norah to go; Norah was the fastest of the three girls. For a while Norah had made a game of seeing how fast she could be – timing herself as she ran all the way there and back. It had been fun, until Miss Fairchild got wind of it and started using her best times to shame Jessica and Alicia when they weren’t as fast.
For this reason, Norah was taking her time and didn’t bother ringing the bell to get the attention of the cashier. She was about to shoplift a Caramello Koala when he finally made an appearance.
‘Sorry, I didn’t see you there.’ He grinned, revealing a slight gap in his teeth. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You’re Nerida, right?’
‘Norah,’ she replied. ‘With an “h”.’
Ishir gestured to the chocolate in her hand. ‘Caramello Koala – my personal favourite.’
She put it back on the shelf and pushed Miss Fairchild’s items forward. ‘I’m not allowed unfortunately. The foster mother will lock me in the basement for buying chocolate.’ She laughed as if it were a joke. Telling the truth as if it were a joke was one of many ways she amused herself. ‘Anyhoo,’ she continued, ‘can you put this on the Wild Meadows account, please?’
Ishir wrote the total in the account book and put the face cream in a bag. As he handed over the bag, he took the chocolate off the shelf and dropped it in. ‘You know you want it.’
Norah shook her head. ‘I said –’
‘It’s on me,’ he said in a magnanimous tone that was perhaps supposed to make him sound like a wealthy person. It came out a bit weird, and he seemed to realise this because he immediately dropped his gaze. ‘I won’t put it on the account,’ he explained in a normal voice. ‘It’s a gift.’
‘Why would you give me a gift?’ Norah frowned. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing.’ He looked offended.
‘You must want something.’
‘No. Just to do a good deed.’ He looked like he was regretting it.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s no big deal. Really.’
But it was a big deal. Norah thought about it for ages afterwards, wondering if he’d come and ask her for something in return. He never did. It was the only time anyone other than her sisters had done something for her without wanting anything in return.
‘I gave chocolate to all the pretty girls,’ Ishir said, when Norah told him the story.
‘Oh.’
‘But you were the prettiest,’ he said, catching himself. ‘You were the most beautiful girl in our entire school. I would have given you the entire stash of Caramello Koalas if you’d wanted them.’
Norah couldn’t tell if he was serious. She decided to test him on it. ‘So, if I wanted a round of drinks for my friends?’
‘Then I’d tell you to put that credit card away.’
He grinned, and Norah got the same giddy feeling as when she arrived home to the dogs at the end of the day.
‘So you’re back here because of the bones?’ he asked, turning to reach for a glass. The tea towel hung from his back pocket now. Norah hadn’t known how sexy a tea towel could be.
‘Yep.’
‘And these guys too?’ He glanced over at the table.
She nodded. ‘What about you? Why are you still in Port Agatha?’
He grimaced. ‘Back here, not still here.’ He started pulling their beers. ‘It’s an important distinction.’
‘If you say so.’
‘It is,’ he said. ‘My dad passed away six months ago so I came back to help out my mum. I’m recently divorced, so it was a good excuse to get away.’ He put two beers on the counter and started pulling two more. ‘The pub’s on the market now, but we haven’t had a lot of interest, if you can believe it.’ He nodded at the drunk at the bar. ‘I keep trying to convince Larry to make me an offer, but no luck so far.’
‘Kids?’ Norah asked.
‘Dog,’ he replied.
Norah made a low, involuntary noise.
She wasn’t stupid. He was a divorced man in a small town. He’d likely worked his way through the eligible women and was just looking for some fresh meat. Norah wasn’t offended. On the contrary, she was delighted.
He finished pulling the beers, then lifted the hatch on the bar. He picked up the tray of drinks, but didn’t move for a moment. He seemed to be surveying her.
‘I can’t believe I gave you a Caramello Koala.’ He shook his head and sighed, as if disappointed in himself. ‘A girl like you deserves a Toblerone at the very least.’
Norah beamed. It was perhaps the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her.
24
JESSICA
BEFORE
Miss Fairchild’s behaviour became intolerable.
‘You didn’t give her those crackers, did you?’ she shrieked one evening after Alicia had managed to get the most recent foster baby to eat some rice crackers. The baby had refused everything but formula for three days. The irony was, Miss Fairchild had given Alicia the crackers and pressured her to feed them to the baby. After all, it wouldn’t look good if babies lost weight on her watch.
‘You stupid girl! Babies can’t eat those. Are you trying to kill her?’
There was no point in arguing with her, or defending themselves; it only made things worse. After a while they’d learned just to lower their gaze as if she were an aggressive dog.
‘We’ve had a lot of these crying babies,’ she snarled another time, after they’d cheered upon getting a burp out of a particularly colicky newborn. ‘You three are the common link. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.’
That day, it was noon and she was still in her pyjamas, her greasy hair in a ponytail. As she watched them suspiciously, Jessica found herself wondering if she’d been drinking. It worried her. She’d always been unpredictable, but this was something else.
The first night-time rampage happened on a Monday.
It was after midnight. Jessica had just finished settling a nine-month-old girl called Suzy who’d arrived with insect bites all over her body. Suzy was (quite rightly) incensed by the itch. It had taken an insane amount of rocking, shushing, singing and calamine lotion to get her to drop off in her crib. When at last she did, Jessica thought she would cry with relief.
Then Miss Fairchild burst into the room.
‘Girls!’ she cried, switching on the light.
Alicia and Norah sat up in bed sleepily, shielding their eyes.
‘I’ve been rocking the baby for two hours and she’s just gone down,’ Jessica whispered, holding her fingers to her lips. ‘Can you turn off the light, please?’
‘Can I turn off the light?’ It was clear from her slurring that Miss Fairchild had had a lot to drink. ‘Well, that’s lovely, isn’t it? I’m the one who feeds you, puts a roof over your head . . .’
Jessica was too concerned about waking the baby to absorb Miss Fairchild’s sloppy rage. She glanced down into the crib and saw that, of course, the baby was stirring.
‘She’s awake!’ Jessica said, her heart sinking.
‘Whose fault is that?’ Miss Fairchild retorted, and she flounced from the room. She never explained what had brought her into the room in the first place, yet Jessica had a feeling she’d got exactly what she came for.
The next night, she burst in at 2 am.
‘What’s going on in here?’ she demanded, fumbling for the light switch.
Jessica and Alicia sat up in alarm. Norah buried her face under a pillow.
Jessica didn’t know what to say. What was going on? Up until that moment, they’d been fast asleep. Luckily, Miss Fairchild didn’t require an answer. The purpose of her visit was to shout about how ungrateful they were until the baby woke. Then she disappeared, leaving them to deal with it.
‘I’m so tired I think I might die,’ Alicia said the next day at breakfast. ‘Can you die from being tired?’
‘You can,’ Norah said. ‘I read it in a book.’
