Darling Girls, page 22
‘Dirk,’ Jessica said quietly, but there was no one else around so her voice carried.
Alicia peered at the man. Wow, she thought. It is Dirk.
He hadn’t aged well. The hair visible beneath his cap was still red, but there were flecks of grey, and though he was a relatively young man his posture was stooped. He slammed the door and glanced at them over the roof of the car, smiling quizzically. He clearly didn’t recognise them.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Norah said, a few seconds behind, as usual.
‘Do you remember us?’ Jessica asked. ‘I’m Jessica. These are my sisters, Alicia and Norah. We’re the foster kids who grew up at Wild Meadows.’
She sounded so calm. As if she’d slowed herself down to .75, like Alicia often did with a podcast or audiobook. Considering she was normally at least a 1.5, it was a big improvement.
Dirk’s smile vanished abruptly and his eyes darted around the car park.
Interesting, Alicia thought. He’s nervous.
Jessica, strangely, didn’t seem nervous at all. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said. ‘The little girl the police questioned you about all those years ago. Amy. Did you really not see her?’
Dirk dug his hands into his pockets. ‘Look –’
‘It’s important,’ Jessica persisted, cutting him off. ‘Think back.’
Dirk glanced towards the police station, then back at Jessica. ‘If I did see her,’ he said, ‘why would I lie about it?’
‘You tell us,’ Jessica replied. ‘Maybe you were rewarded for lying? Or blackmailed? Or maybe you did something to her.’
Alicia’s gaze, which had been on Jessica, suddenly bounced back to Dirk. She’d always assumed he’d lied for Miss Fairchild; it had never occurred to her he might be covering his own tracks. She hadn’t thought he’d be capable of harming Amy himself. Had she been wrong about that?
‘I didn’t do anything to her,’ he said, ‘because I never saw her.’
‘Bullshit!’ Norah called. ‘If the bones turn out to be Amy’s, you’ll have blood on your hands.’
‘Hey!’
They all turned. Detective Tucker was leaning in the entrance of the police station. His relaxed posture suggested that he’d been watching them for a while.
‘You ready, Dirk?’
Dirk started walking towards the station.
‘If she made you lie,’ Jessica called after him, ‘it’s not too late to say so.’
Dirk kept his head down and his stride swift. Alicia started to wonder if Jessica might be on to something . . .
*
They were climbing into the car when they heard someone calling their names.
‘Alicia! Jessica! Norah!’
Alicia sighed. Running into old acquaintances wherever they went was one thing about small towns that she would be glad to leave behind.
It was Zara. Her hair was braided in two plaits today, reminding Alicia of a Dutch milkmaid. It was a pretty colour – cool brown glinting blonde in the sunshine.
‘Oh, hey, Zara,’ the sisters muttered with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
All Alicia wanted was to get in the car with her sisters and call Meera. Not only did they need Meera’s help, Alicia needed her friend’s voice to soothe her, tell her everything was going to be okay.
‘Your turn to speak to the cops?’ Alicia asked.
Zara nodded, her gaze fixed on the door that Dirk had just walked through. ‘Who was that?’
‘Dirk,’ Norah said. ‘He used to look after the horses at Wild Meadows.’
‘Why’s he talking to the cops?’ Zara asked. ‘Is he a suspect?’
‘I’m not sure they have suspects yet,’ Alicia said, ‘since they haven’t identified a cause of death. Maybe it was natural?’
Zara raised an eyebrow. ‘A child buried in an unmarked grave under a foster home? Natural causes?’
Zara asked a lot of questions. Alicia started to wonder if she was an investigative journalist.
‘What’s Dirk’s last name?’ Zara wanted to know.
The sisters looked at each other.
‘Winter-something?’ Alicia said, pulling it from some part of her memory she hadn’t known existed. ‘Or maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know.’
Zara got out her phone and began to type something into it.
‘We need to go,’ Jessica said. ‘We’re back on with our lawyer in ten minutes. Good luck with the cops, Zara.’
Zara thanked them, still tapping away at her phone, and Alicia, Jessica and Norah piled back into the car with the dogs. But as they pulled onto the street, Alicia saw Zara getting back into her own car rather than going into the police station. Why had she lied? Alicia wondered. And who was she lying for?
43
JESSICA
‘Okay,’ Anna said when they resumed the Zoom meeting back at the cottage. ‘So what happened after you finished giving your statements to police? Did you go back to Wild Meadows?’
Jessica shook her head. ‘A social worker took us to a respite home.’
Anna wasn’t taking any notes now. Jessica started to feel self-conscious, worried that she wasn’t making sense. She’d taken another pill half an hour ago, after the interaction with Miss Fairchild, and she was now feeling floaty and relaxed.
‘We stayed there for three months, while they looked for a permanent home that would take all three of us. They couldn’t find one, and we refused to be separated, so we went to a group home, where we stayed until we aged out. Because of our “trauma”, we received ongoing weekly counselling until then.’ She smiled wryly at her sisters. ‘Norah and Alicia hated it, but I quite liked it. Having someone just listen to me like that, giving me their undivided attention? I’d never experienced that before.’
‘And Miss Fairchild wasn’t investigated further?’ Anna asked.
Jessica shrugged. ‘Not to my knowledge. But after that day we never heard much more about it.’
‘Wow.’ Anna appeared gratifyingly appalled, eyes wide as she shook her head. ‘Okay, let’s recap . . . You reported Miss Fairchild’s abuse of Amy to the cops, but they found no sign of her in the house and no record that she existed. Then they found a doll with her name on it and decided . . . what?’
‘That Amy was a figment of my imagination brought on by childhood trauma,’ Jessica said. ‘My therapist thought that Amy was the little girl inside me, the one who yearned to be loved and cared for.’
‘And they asserted that all three of you had the same delusion? And you believed this?’
Anna sounded incredulous, as if they’d been stupid for going along with it. Maybe they had. While it wouldn’t have been the first instance in history of three different people imagining the same thing, it was extraordinarily rare. Jessica had often suspected that, faced with three adolescent girls who swore blind the child existed, the therapist had been forced to dig deep to find a plausible explanation.
Alicia shrugged. ‘Everyone said the same thing. The police. The social workers. Our therapists. Everyone we trusted. And given that there wasn’t a single shred of evidence that Amy was real, what were we supposed to think?’
‘You never considered the possibility that your foster mother may have killed her and hidden both her body and any sign that there’d been an infant in the house?’
‘No,’ Jessica said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because that would’ve meant that Amy was dead.’
Anna was quiet for a moment. ‘But now,’ she said, ‘a little girl’s body has been found underneath the house.’
‘Yes.’
She frowned deeply, fiddling with a locket around her neck.
‘What is it?’ Norah asked.
‘I was just thinking.’ Anna shook her head. ‘If this body turns out to be Amy, it will be a monumental cock-up for the cops in Port Agatha. When it comes out, it’s bound to cause a political shitstorm.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Alicia said.
‘Maybe not,’ Anna replied, sitting back in her chair. ‘But I guarantee they have.’
THE OFFICE OF DR WARREN, PSYCHIATRIST
‘By the time I turned fourteen,’ I tell Dr Warren, ‘I’d noticed John was looking at me differently. He’d comment on even the most modest of my clothes, calling them sluttish. He talked about me being a young woman and having to be mindful of men’s sinful thoughts – as if I could control them. He watched closely while I cleaned – too closely. Sometimes he’d ask me to go back and redo something that required me to bend over. It was revolting.’
Dr Warren tries to look aghast, but his exhilaration shines through.
‘Mum noticed it too. Several times, I caught her watching him watching me. It made me hate her even more than him. It was around this time that John started visiting me in the basement. Whenever it happened, I thought about my mother upstairs. Sitting in her chair or washing John’s underclothes while her husband defiled her daughter. She knew. She must have known.
‘I didn’t want it to happen, let me be absolutely clear about that. Not for a single solitary moment. But when I thought about how foolish it made my mother look, how humiliating it was for her and the pain it would cause . . . it helped a little. It gave me the strength to endure it.’
Dr Warren leans forward with his elbows on his knees like a child at the movies. His eyes are hooded, his cheeks flushed. ‘John sexually assaulted you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you blamed your mother for that too?’
I nod. ‘It was her job to protect me from monsters. He was just the monster, doing what monsters did.’
Dr Warren writes something on his notepad. I wonder if he was quoting me for his thesis on mother–daughter issues.
‘I had just turned fifteen when I realised I was pregnant.’
Dr Warren’s jaw drops.
‘It was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me. John had locked me in the basement for twenty-four hours without food and water just for answering back – what would he do when he found out I was pregnant? Fear of him finding out occupied most of my thoughts, but I was surprised to notice another emotion cropping up alongside this. Pleasure. Not about the baby; I was excited because I’d finally found a way to cause my mother even more pain and humiliation.
‘“I’m pregnant,” I announced one morning at breakfast.
‘John looked up from his plate. By that point, I’d managed to conceal my pregnancy for nearly five months. It was easier than I expected. When no one pays any attention to you, you can hide quite a lot. Even if they were having sex with you, it turns out. Eventually, I realised that if I didn’t tell him, John might not ever realise that I was pregnant.
‘As my comment registered, John’s gaze dropped to my stomach. Unlike the last few months, when I’d dressed in oversized, baggy clothes, that morning I’d made no effort to conceal my growing belly.
‘My mother stood by the sink, water dripping from her rubber gloves onto the kitchen floor.
‘“No,” she whispered. But she could see that it was true.
‘John’s expression told me I had good reason to be terrified. His lips tightened, his nostrils flared, and his fat hands trembled. The fact that neither of them asked who the father was spoke volumes.
‘“You filthy little whore,” John said, rising to his feet. The quiet menace in his voice was more frightening than if he’d been shouting.
‘I had prepared myself. I’d packed my bag and it was on the porch. I knew John would kick me out for being pregnant, despite the fact it was his fault. Mum would do nothing to stop him, but she’d probably feel sufficiently guilty that she’d manage to connect me with friends in Melbourne or find some money to help me get started.
‘The timing of my announcement was important. I needed plenty of daylight if I was going to walk into town (I doubted John would give me a ride after what I had to say), then get a bus to Melbourne. There, I’d find a women’s refuge, get on welfare, and then find a job and a place to live.
‘I’d thought about this day and night since the moment I realised I was pregnant. How could I have predicted that when John found out, he wouldn’t kick me out? I should have known he’d do the opposite. Put me somewhere he could keep an eye on me.’
‘The basement?’ Dr Warren guesses.
‘Bingo.’
He smiles. Then he catches himself, straightens his face, and nods sombrely. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘This time, I was in the basement for months. My mother brought me food and drink, even a few books, but she rarely spoke to me. John didn’t visit at all, which was a not-insignificant blessing. He had told everyone I’d been sent off to boarding school. It was genius. No one would think to question it. When I was old enough to have finished high school, John could say I’d gone away to university, then moved overseas. If my mother and John had been more sociable, it might have been hard to hide me, but as they rarely had visitors it was possible that I could spend the rest of my days in the basement and no one would think to look for me.’
Dr Warren’s face lights up. ‘Being locked in a basement for months on end can have serious psychological consequences for anyone, let alone a pregnant teenager,’ he cries.
‘I realise that,’ I say, and he has the grace to look sheepish.
44
ALICIA
It was getting late, and Alicia was tired. Beside her on the couch, Jessica looked wrecked. Meanwhile, Norah continued to hound Anna with questions.
Even though the idea that Amy was not imaginary had crossed Alicia’s mind in the past few days, it felt too enormous to process. Alicia could have spent a hundred years reflecting on it, and it still might not have sunk in. Norah, meanwhile, had already moved on to what it meant for them now.
‘What I don’t understand,’ she was saying to Anna, ‘is how we’d even know it was Amy’s remains under Wild Meadows. How could they identify her, if there are no records?’
‘Given what you’ve told us, there is a way,’ Anna said. ‘If the child had six toes, that will show up in the coroner’s report.’
‘Of course,’ Alicia said quietly. ‘I hadn’t thought.’
‘And if it is Amy,’ Norah continued, ‘will Miss Fairchild be charged?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Anna said. ‘When a body has been buried for so long it can be hard to determine the cause of death, so it is often very difficult to make a case for murder or manslaughter. If, indeed, Miss Fairchild did murder her.’
‘But the fact that she denied Amy’s existence . . .’ Norah said.
‘Is compelling, definitely,’ Anna said. ‘But let’s take this one step at a time.’
‘Okay, but are you feeling confident?’ Norah asked. ‘I mean, you don’t think we could be blamed for anything, do you?’
‘My job is to make sure you aren’t,’ Anna said. ‘Oh, one more thing: does Dirk Winterbourne continue to deny having seen Amy?’
‘As far as we know,’ Alicia said. ‘That was always the weirdest part for me. If Dirk had seen her, why didn’t he say anything? The only thing I can think is that Miss Fairchild had something on him.’
Anna paused, looking thoughtful. ‘What if I told you I knew a reason he might lie?’
‘What?’ Alicia said.
‘You weren’t the only one talking to the police at lunchtime. I also had a conversation with a cop I know who has connections in Port Agatha. He told me that the detectives have been speaking to known sex offenders in the area at the time.’ Anna raised her eyebrows. ‘And one of them is Dirk.’
Alicia, Norah and Jessica were in the living room of their cottage, gathering their things before setting off on the two-hour drive back to Melbourne.
‘It’s so strange, talking about Amy after all this time,’ Alicia said.
Strange wasn’t the right word. She wasn’t sure what the right word might be, but harrowing felt closer. All day, she’d felt on the verge of tears, and after yesterday’s episode the last thing she wanted was to start crying again.
‘Were we stupid, believing we’d imagined Amy?’ Norah asked. ‘I remember thinking it was ridiculous, at first. But it seemed to be settled. Maybe we should have tried harder to make them listen?’
‘We were kids,’ Alicia said, to herself as much as Norah. ‘We had to believe what they told us.’
‘Maybe this body turning up is a good thing?’ Norah said. She looked anxious even suggesting it, wringing her hands. ‘I mean, if she has six toes . . .’
‘Then it’s only the beginning,’ Jessica said. ‘You heard Anna. Even if they prove Amy existed, it doesn’t mean that Miss Fairchild killed her. And the body’s so old, it might be impossible to prove.’
Alicia frowned at Jessica. It wasn’t what she said; it was that her tone was off. The lack of emotion. She seemed . . . flat. She seemed dazed.
‘Are you all right, Jess?’ Alicia asked.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘You look kind of spaced out.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
A phone began to ring.
‘It’s been a long day,’ Alicia said as she rummaged in her bag. ‘Why don’t we stay here another night and drive home tomorrow when we’re fresh?’
Norah nodded her agreement, but Jessica shook her head. ‘Let’s just go home,’ she said. ‘We’ll feel better when we’re back in our own beds.’
Alicia located her phone and raised it to her ear. ‘Alicia Connelly speaking.’
‘Alicia, hi, it’s Sonja – Jessica’s business manager?’
‘Hi, Sonja.’ She raised her eyebrows at Jessica.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, but is Jessica there?’ Sonja asked. ‘I haven’t been able to reach her.’
‘That’s weird,’ Alicia said. ‘Maybe her phone’s on silent. She’s right here – I’ll put her on.’
Alicia held the phone out to Jessica who, oddly, took a step back. ‘It’s just Sonja,’ Alicia told her. ‘She said she hasn’t been able to reach you on your phone.’
For a moment, it looked like Jessica wasn’t going to take the call, but then she did. ‘Hi, Sonja.’
Alicia couldn’t hear what Sonja was saying, but she could make out her high-pitched tones of worry.
