Darling Girls, page 21
‘She put her hands on me,’ Miss Fairchild said. ‘That’s assault.’
And there it was. They’d fallen right into Miss Fairchild’s trap.
‘Let’s go,’ Alicia said. ‘Cancel the burgers.’
‘I could never control her, you know, even as a little girl,’ Miss Fairchild said to the cops, as Jessica and Alicia each took one of Norah’s arms and pulled her towards the door. ‘Her sisters always covered for her. Clearly, they still do.’
Norah tried to wrench free of their grip, but this time her sisters didn’t let her go.
38
NORAH
BEFORE
The day they told the police about Amy seemed to go on forever. After hearing the news that Amy wasn’t at Wild Meadows, they were taken by car to the police station.
There, Norah, Alicia and Jessica were shown into separate rooms and asked to tell their stories again. They answered a seemingly endless number of questions. What did Amy look like? When did she arrive? What was her daily routine? What specific interactions with her did they remember? Norah couldn’t figure out how this information could possibly assist them in finding her, but after a policewoman offered her a chocolate bar in exchange for answering the questions, Norah decided to go along with it.
‘So no one saw Amy besides the three of you?’ the woman asked. ‘No one at all?’
It was shocking to realise that it was true. It was something she’d never considered before. They rarely had visitors. No friends. No family. And Miss Fairchild had been so reluctant to take Amy anywhere, saying that she needed to stay close to home in order to ‘bond’. The only people who ever visited the house were social workers, and the last time Sandi came Jessica had been told to take her to the basement.
‘Scott!’ Norah cried suddenly. ‘Scott saw her. Several times.’
‘Scott Michaels?’ the woman asked.
‘I don’t know his last name, but he’s my social worker,’ Norah said. ‘Awful guy.’
Norah waited for the woman to leave the room or make a call or tell someone, but she didn’t. Her expression barely changed.
‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘my colleagues have spoken to Scott, and to Sandi Riley, but neither of them had any knowledge of a toddler living at Wild Meadows.’
Norah shook her head. ‘Sandi never saw her because Miss Fairchild made Jessica hide her in the basement – but Scott definitely saw Amy.’
Norah thought for a moment. Scott and Miss Fairchild were friends. He would lie for her. But Norah didn’t understand why he’d have to. And why was there no paperwork for Amy? Why would Miss Fairchild suddenly pack up Amy’s things the morning they’d decided to go to the police? It didn’t make sense!
The policewoman looked as frustrated as Norah felt. ‘No one else saw her?’
Norah shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘All right,’ she said. She put a hand on Norah’s, which perhaps was meant to be reassuring. Norah snatched it away.
‘Wait!’ Norah felt it in the back of her brain. ‘There was someone . . . Dirk! Dirk saw her! Dirk looks after the horses at Wild Meadows. He came to Amy’s birthday party to take back the horse I stole.’
The policewoman brightened at this. ‘Dirk Winterbourne?’
Norah nodded, though she didn’t exactly know his full name. ‘Yes! Ask him – he’ll tell you.’
Finally, the policewoman nodded and headed for the door. Before she left, Norah added, ‘Make sure they’ve searched the house thoroughly. Check the rubbish bins, too.’
Norah felt encouraged. Amy had to be somewhere. And when the police spoke to Dirk, they’d have to start taking the sisters’ claims seriously. She just hoped they moved quickly enough to find Amy, wherever she was.
Around lunchtime, they were shown to a lunchroom at the police station, where they were greeted by a social worker they didn’t recognise.
Her name was Genevieve, and she wore Doc Martens and a pretty floral dress. She brought them salad rolls and more chocolate bars to eat but she didn’t know anything about the case, so Norah had to sit by the cracked-open door to eavesdrop on the police in order to get information.
‘Their stories are consistent,’ Norah heard Max saying to someone.
‘They may have planned it,’ another cop said.
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘Yet they’re not identical. They each described the events in different ways, but the events are the same.’
‘Okay, but –’
‘I believe them, Jerry. I’ve always thought something wasn’t quite right with that Wild Meadows woman.’
They stopped talking then, and Norah heard a new, third voice speaking.
‘You need to see this,’ the voice said.
Norah leaned closer to the door.
‘Are you girls thirsty?’ Genevieve said. ‘I can get you something to drink from the vending machine.’
‘Shh!’ Norah said.
‘Where did you find this?’ Norah heard Max say.
‘Wild Meadows. In the basement.’
Norah peeked around the doorframe and came face to face with Max, who was walking towards them. In his hand was a knitted doll with blonde hair and blue eyes. Amy was written across her chest.
‘That’s the doll I found in the basement the day Amy and I were locked down there,’ Jessica said.
Max frowned. ‘You’ve seen this?’
Jessica took the doll. ‘I thought it was weird that Miss Fairchild had a doll called Amy because it’s definitely older than our Amy.’
Max looked at the doll. ‘So it’s not possible . . .’ He paused, winced. ‘It’s not possible the doll is Amy?’
‘It’s a doll,’ Norah said slowly, as if she were talking to an idiot, which apparently she was. ‘Amy is a human.’
Max exhaled. He looked sad. As if he wanted to believe her, but it was impossible.
‘What about Dirk?’ Norah said. ‘Did you speak to him?’
‘My colleague did.’
‘And?’ she demanded. ‘Did he tell you? About Amy’s birthday party? The pony rides?’
Long exhale. ‘Dirk has no knowledge of a little girl called Amy living at the farm.’
‘Bullshit!’ Norah cried. Clenching her fist, she slammed it into the wall, which buckled slightly; it was barely thicker than paper.
Max didn’t seem concerned. ‘He did say . . .’
‘What?’ Jessica asked.
‘He said he had seen you three playing with a doll that matched the description of the child.’
Norah felt the rage rising in her body like the tide. It pulsed so hard she felt like she might burst out of her skin.
She slammed her fist into the wall again, and again. She punched it until her knuckles bled, until her fist broke clear through the flimsy plasterboard. Then she went searching for something else to punch.
39
ALICIA
‘Shit. Shit shit shit. Shit.’
Alicia paced back and forth on the tiled side porch of the old pub. The chatter of diners inside floated out through the open windows, but the streets were deserted apart from the odd car driving through.
‘Did you hear her? She’s going to press charges against Norah for assault.’
‘And I didn’t even get a punch in,’ Norah said miserably.
Norah and Jessica sat on an old church pew that was pressed up against the brick wall. Alicia expected that Jessica would be beside herself, but she wasn’t. She was quiet. Almost spaced out.
‘Jessica!’ Alicia stared at her. ‘Do you understand what just happened? Norah has a CCO! She’ll go to jail!’
‘I understand that,’ Jessica said.
‘Then why aren’t you freaking out? Are you on something? Why am I the only one who’s panicking?’
Jessica shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I can’t summon the correct level of stress for you, but I assure you I’m concerned. What do you want from me?’
Alicia sank onto the pew beside them. ‘Sorry. I’m just . . . worried.’ She glanced at Norah. ‘But we’ll work it out. Maybe Anna will be able to give us some advice.’
They sat there for a few more minutes before Alicia realised what was bugging her.
‘Did you guys find it weird that Miss Fairchild didn’t seem anxious? I mean, if the body is Amy, it’s pretty incriminating for her.’
‘The body isn’t Amy,’ Jessica said.
‘Unless it is,’ Alicia said.
‘Alicia, would you listen to yourself?’
‘Hear me out. Miss Fairchild was the adult in the house when Amy lived there. If the body is hers, she’ll have some explaining to do. What will she say? That she didn’t know Amy existed? That we smuggled her into the house, murdered her and buried her without Miss Fairchild’s knowledge?’
Jessica opened her mouth as if to dispute this, but before she could speak a voice said, ‘Pretty close.’
They all turned towards the door. Patel and Hando had joined them on the porch without them noticing.
‘Her current story is that she had to stop fostering babies because you three were jealous and often became agitated or even violent with the smaller children,’ Patel said. ‘She says if there is a child buried on the property that you girls are responsible.’ Her gaze flickered to Norah. ‘Norah specifically.’
‘Bullshit!’ Norah sprung from her seat. ‘She was the one who was jealous! She was the one who became agitated with the babies!’
Alicia stood and put a hand on Norah’s shoulder.
‘But her testimony is compelling,’ Patel pointed out. ‘You three had troubled childhoods, and Norah has well-documented issues with violence. We’ve also seen enough to know that the three of you would do just about anything to protect each other. A lovely trait among sisters – but also a pretty powerful motivation to lie.’
Alicia sank back against the brick wall. Once again, Miss Fairchild had managed to paint herself as the victim. They were still three foster kids, troubled and angry and inherently suspect.
Patel exhaled. ‘I just want to know what happened at Wild Meadows,’ she said, sounding frustrated. ‘I want to know whose bones were buried under the house.’
‘So do we.’ Jessica’s voice was quiet but intense. ‘That’s why we came here.’
‘Then why didn’t you mention Amy from the start?’ Patel exclaimed.
‘We did.’ Jessica rose to her feet. ‘We did mention her. Twenty-five years ago, we risked everything to tell the police about Amy and no one believed she was real. Now, we get a phone call out of the blue telling us there’s a body, and suddenly we’re supposed to understand that now you accept she was real all along? You should be apologising for the mistake the police made twenty-five years ago!’
Patel had the decency to look abashed at this. Hando, too, looked uncomfortable.
‘So you think the bones are Amy’s?’ Norah asked.
Patel shrugged. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Well, if there’s one thing to learn from what happened twenty-five years ago,’ Alicia said, ‘it’s that we are the ones who are telling the truth.’
40
JESSICA
BEFORE
Despite appearing to doubt their story, the police were kind – perhaps because they were children. In the three hours they’d been at the station they’d been treated to an endless supply of soft drinks and chocolate, and an officer had bandaged Norah’s hands so they resembled large white boxing gloves. She’d done some damage to the wall, but she hadn’t got into trouble. One of the benefits of the hole was that they could now hear the conversations happening in other offices clearly. It was obviously a slow day for policing, because one hundred per cent of the discussions revolved around them.
‘The girls have a history of trauma,’ someone was saying. ‘The foster mother says they’re all troubled and regularly invent things.’
‘But the part about extended time off from school was true.’ This was Max talking. ‘How does Holly explain that?’
‘School refusal, apparently. She wanted them to go but they said no.’
‘Did she tell the school this?’
‘No. The school had them down as sick days.’
A long sigh. Norah swung one of her boxing gloves in the air in front of her, her eyes narrowed. ‘School refusal,’ she muttered angrily.
‘Let me speak to the boy again,’ Max said. ‘To double-check.’
‘We’ve already spoken to him twice.’
‘I’ll triple-check then.’
Norah’s boxing gloves shot upright, like a cheer. ‘Good old Max.’
‘Are you saying you believe these girls, Sarge?’ the other voice said.
A chair scraped across the floor. ‘I’m saying these are serious allegations that need to be investigated. If their story is true, a child is either missing or dead. Even if they are troubled, it doesn’t mean they’re lying.’
A few seconds later Max appeared in the doorway.
‘Thanks,’ Norah said. ‘For triple-checking.’
He looked surprised, then smiled. ‘These walls are thinner than I thought.’ He sat on a vinyl chair and let out a long breath. ‘Look. We’ve searched the house again from top to bottom and found nothing. Dirk is still claiming he’s never seen her. And there’s no record of Amy ever coming to the home. She wasn’t legally adopted, she didn’t come through the foster system, and she doesn’t match the description of any missing children.’ He looked dejected. ‘Where else could she have come from?’
The three girls turned to each other. Not one of them was able to answer his question.
41
NORAH
Norah wasn’t sure she believed in heaven, but if it existed, she thought it would resemble this fenced-off patch of dirt, with these four giant hysterical dogs.
She’d been out the back collecting her dogs when Ishir appeared.
‘I was wondering where you went!’ he cried, beaming at her. ‘Shall we throw sticks to the dogs for a bit?’
Of course Norah wanted to throw sticks.
‘Banjo – fetch!’
Ishir tossed a stick in the air and Banjo leaped like a clumsy elephant. Not to be outdone, Thong, Converse and Couch also leaped, their mismatched levels of height and coordination resulting in a cheerful dog pile-up on the grass.
‘Ishir!’ An irate-looking waitress poked her head outside. ‘What the fuck are you doing? There’s a full house in here. Get your arse back inside or I’m quitting!’ She retreated without waiting for a response.
‘Again?’ Ishir said to the dogs, who all nodded.
Norah couldn’t remember when she’d last enjoyed herself so much. She particularly enjoyed admiring Ishir’s flexing bicep. Today he was wearing a bow tie decorated with Bert and Ernie. The man had style, no doubt about it.
‘Do you want a turn?’ he asked Norah.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You’re doing a great job.’
‘Must be weird,’ he said, between throws. ‘Being back here after all this time.’
‘It is.’
‘Not good weird, I’m guessing?’
He tossed the stick again as Norah contemplated this. At this moment, at least, it wasn’t bad weird.
‘I think my sisters are more freaked out than I am. I get it. Some scary stuff happened to us here. But for me, the scariest thing was always the prospect of being separated from Alicia and Jessica. Honestly, coming back here without having to fear that . . . it feels kind of good.’
He watched her thoughtfully, seemingly unaware of the four dogs thrashing around at his feet.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘I don’t blame Port Agatha for what happened to us. It’s hardly the town’s fault. I kind of like it here.’
He threw the stick. ‘Not gonna lie, I was hoping you’d say that, because I’ve got a very old car, and I’m not sure if it could cope with driving back and forth to Melbourne every week.’
Norah felt a zing in the centre of her chest. ‘You’re not very good at playing it cool, Ishir.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Never have been.’
‘How’s it working for you?’ she said, in her American Dr Phil voice.
‘Well, I’m divorced,’ he said. ‘And I had two serious girlfriends before I was married, and one since. All of them dumped me.’ He threw the stick again. ‘So I’m gonna say not well.’
‘I’ve never married,’ Norah told him. ‘I date occasionally, mostly to get odd jobs done around the house for free. I broke the nose of my last date and sent him sexy pictures in exchange for not going to the cops.’
Ishir winced. ‘Did it work?’
‘Naturally.’ She was about to offer to show him when she noticed his blush.
‘This is fun,’ he said. ‘Being out here with you.’
Norah could see he meant it. It was extra sweet as she hadn’t even showed him her boobs.
‘Here . . . your turn.’ He handed her the stick. ‘Go on. Try it. It’s fun.’
Norah threw the stick and watched the motley crew crash into each other in their eagerness to fetch it. They looked as happy as she was feeling.
‘You might be interested to know,’ Norah said, ‘that not playing it cool is working very well for you this time.’
The dogs went crazy around them as they grinned at each other like idiots.
‘Ishir, you arsehole! Get back behind the bar before I call your mother!’
Ishir’s grin faded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess our date is over.’
‘That was a date?’
‘I hope it was.’
It didn’t resemble any date she had been on before. No meal, no exchange of awkward personal information, no list of odd jobs that needed doing.
No nudes required. No videos.
She didn’t hate it. She didn’t hate it at all.
42
ALICIA
Jessica had parked across the road from the pub, in the police station car park. As the three women crossed the road, a beaten-up old station wagon pulled up next to their car. A man in a baseball cap emerged from it.
