Darling Girls, page 5
It was why she needed to go back to Port Agatha.
As Norah slipped out, Alicia waved, but Jessica didn’t even notice. The irony of Jessica always worrying about her was not lost on Norah.
In the driveway, Norah unlocked her car and got inside, taking a minute to bask in the silence and the comforting scent of old dog vomit that had dried into the seats. Today had involved far too much talking. Norah appreciated the great wonder of communication as much as the next person, but she despised it in excess. She particularly despised it when the topic had anything to do with her childhood.
She started the car and was preparing to drive off when her phone flashed with a new message.
My nose is broken. I’ve spent the entire night in the emergency room. You can’t just go around assaulting people, Nora.
The message was from someone called Kevin. Norah was about to reply that he had the wrong number when she remembered the man she’d put into a cab to the hospital a few hours earlier, blood dripping down the front of his shirt.
Shit.
She hadn’t told her sisters about him. She’d been distracted by the news of the discovery at Wild Meadows, but even if she hadn’t, she probably would have kept it to herself. After what the judge had said about Norah running out of chances, Jessica would just worry, and what was the point of that? Norah could take care of this herself.
She picked up the phone and thumbed in a reply.
Send me a list of your medical expenses and I’ll pay them. P.S. It’s Norah. With an ‘h’.
Three dots appeared immediately. A second later, another message.
It was a public hospital. It’s not about the money.
Jesus H. Christ. Now the man had principles?
She turned on the car light, lifted her top and snapped a photo of her breasts. Let’s see what his principles thought of that.
For your pain and suffering, she wrote.
She sent it. For a moment, there was no response. Then Norah saw dots.
That’s . . . not what I expected. Wow.
She could practically see his revolting smile. Norah thumbed another quick message.
Just don’t go to the cops, okay? I have a community corrections order. It’s like a suspended sentence.
Kevin: Lol. Seriously?
Norah: Seriously. You should count yourself lucky. The last guy didn’t come off as well as you.
Kevin sent back a laughing face, which was weird, but Norah figured she’d got her point across. She chalked up Kevin’s easy acceptance of the situation to the fact that she was extremely attractive, and men tended to make poor choices when it came to extremely attractive women. It was one of the few certainties in Norah’s life that she could rely on.
She dusted off her hands theatrically and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. There, she thought. She’d taken care of it. If there was one thing Norah had learned from growing up in foster care, she thought as she drove away, it was how to take care of things. Her methods were a little unorthodox, but they had to be. Back when she was a little girl, it was her unorthodox methods that had kept her and her sisters alive.
8
NORAH
BEFORE
‘You’re lucky to be coming to this home,’ Norah’s social worker, Scott, told her as they pulled up at Wild Meadows.
Norah looked up at the house doubtfully. ‘Why am I lucky?’
It was an important question, Norah had determined. She was ten years old, and it was her seventh foster placement. She’d been told she was lucky to go to the last place, where she’d shared a room with a teenage boy who liked to crawl into bed with her at night. (When she’d told her foster mother, the woman was unconcerned. ‘If he does it again, kick him in the balls,’ she said. Good advice, as it turned out.) She’d been told she was lucky to go to the place with the cat who bit her so deeply she’d needed eight stitches. She’d been told she was lucky when she was sent to the place that made the kids eat hot sauce if they asked for more food.
This time, she wanted to understand why she was lucky.
Scott pulled up the handbrake. ‘Because you have somewhere to live.’
He smiled, too stupid to be ashamed of his disgusting little teeth. But his eyes remained dead, empty holes in his face.
Scott, Norah had learned, was an arsehole. The type who muttered around kids and laughed too loudly around grown-ups. When he’d collected Norah that morning he’d said, ‘My, haven’t you grown?’ and his eyes had lingered on her a little too long.
Norah had grown in the previous few months. She was the tallest in her class at her last school, taller even than the boys. Taller even than Scott, which wasn’t hard. She had also started to become soft and curvy in the breast area (‘early for your age,’ her last foster mother told her), which, from the way Scott’s gaze skimmed her chest, had not gone unnoticed.
She crossed her arms and stared him down. I see you, arsehole.
‘Miss Fairchild is a very nice woman,’ he continued. ‘She has another foster daughter around your age.’
‘Is there a Mr Fairchild?’
Also an important question. At another placement, there had been a Mr who always sat very close to Norah on the couch. Norah had seen the writing on the wall long before the day he’d opened his trousers, so she had her pocketknife ready. If she was going to need her pocketknife here, it would be useful to have a heads-up.
‘No Mr Fairchild,’ Scott said.
As they walked towards the house, the front door opened and a woman emerged. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, and she reminded Norah of the Barbie she’d played with at her therapist’s office, except that the Barbie’s hair had been hacked off and this woman’s hair was shoulder-length and mousse-scrunched wavy. She wore a pink sleeveless dress with a drop waist.
‘Hello!’ said Barbie. ‘I’m Miss Fairchild.’
‘You look like Barbie,’ Norah said.
The woman blinked. Finally, she let out a short, high-pitched laugh. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you funny?’
‘Call me if she gives you any trouble,’ Scott said to Miss Fairchild. ‘I’ll be back in two weeks to check in.’
Scott always said that when he left Norah at a new placement and then she didn’t see him again for months. She wondered why he bothered.
He didn’t make eye contact with Norah as he climbed back into his car.
‘Won’t you come in?’ Miss Fairchild said, once he was gone.
Norah, clutching her garbage bag full of possessions, followed her into the house.
‘Isn’t she pretty, Jessica?’ Miss Fairchild was saying to the other child. ‘She could be a model!’
Norah snuck a look at Jessica. Despite Scott saying she was around Norah’s age, she was about half Norah’s height and – judging by her behaviour – a quarter of her intelligence. She sidled alongside Miss Fairchild, oddly close, perhaps territorial. Norah wanted to tell her to relax; she could have the freakish blonde all to herself, thank you very much.
‘First things first,’ Miss Fairchild said when they reached the stairs. ‘I want you to know that whatever happened at your last place will not happen here.’
‘What happened?’ Jessica asked.
Miss Fairchild nudged her sharply. ‘Jessica!’
But Norah didn’t care. She looked directly at Jessica. ‘I kicked my foster brother in the balls when he crawled into bed with me. He was a perv.’
Miss Fairchild exchanged a glance with Jessica, the two of them raising their eyebrows in sync. They reminded Norah of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
‘Well,’ Miss Fairchild said finally, ‘I want you to know that you’re safe here.’
‘Good,’ Norah said. She was relieved to hear it, but she had her pocketknife for back-up all the same. After the experiences she’d had, she wasn’t inclined to take anyone’s word for it. ‘So what are the house rules?’
It was yet another question she’d learned to ask upfront, before she could be found guilty of an infraction she didn’t know about or that had been newly created.
‘We all pitch in with the cleaning,’ Miss Fairchild said. ‘It’s a big place so there’s a lot to do.’
This was fine by Norah. At her previous placement the house had been verging on squalor. The kids all had to share a bed, and in three months the sheets hadn’t seen the inside of the washing machine. When she offered to wash them herself, she’d been told she was a snobby little brat and made to sleep on the floor.
‘Is there a particular chore you’d enjoy doing?’
‘Laundry?’ she suggested.
Miss Fairchild smiled. ‘That would be wonderful.’
‘But that’s my job,’ Jessica protested, tugging at her foster mother’s skirt.
Miss Fairchild ignored her.
‘Do we have a bedtime?’ Norah asked.
This tended to vary wildly from place to place. At one foster home, she’d been put to bed at 6 pm, along with the toddlers and babies, so her foster parents could drink beer. At another, she’d been left to her own devices and put herself to bed whenever she was tired.
‘How about eight o’clock? You can sleep in the bedroom opposite mine. Jessica will make up the beds for you both.’
Jessica looked surprised. Actually, she looked appalled.
‘Come now, Jessica,’ Miss Fairchild said, ‘you can’t sleep in my bed forever. Of course, if you are scared during the night, Norah, you’re welcome to come into my bed. You’re in a new environment.’
‘Mummy –’ Jessica started.
‘Enough!’ Miss Fairchild’s reaction was so swift even Norah was startled. She gripped Jessica’s arms just above the elbow, tightly enough to lift Jessica’s heels. Her face became as white as chalk. ‘It’s not just the two of us anymore, Jessica. The sooner you understand that, the better.’ Miss Fairchild’s fingernails were digging into Jessica’s skin. Their faces were almost touching. ‘And enough of this “Mummy” nonsense. From now on, you’re to call me Miss Fairchild.’
When she finally let go, there were marks on Jessica’s arms and she was blinking back tears.
‘Right,’ Miss Fairchild said, her smile returning. Her eyes, Norah noticed now, weren’t like Barbie’s. Rather than being startled-looking, this woman’s eyes were sharp. Knowing. ‘I’ll get you some fresh sheets and towels.’
With that she disappeared, leaving Norah and Jessica blinking in her wake. It wasn’t the outburst that unsettled Norah; she’d seen plenty worse. The speed of her recovery, though, complete with a fresh maniacal smile – that was new. Norah didn’t like new.
‘You’d better not go into her room,’ Jessica said softly, not looking at Norah.
‘I won’t,’ Norah said.
She wasn’t trying to make peace. It was simply that the idea of visiting that woman’s bed in the middle of the night was infinitely scarier than any nightmare Norah might be trying to escape.
At her first foster home, Norah had received a fist in the stomach before she’d even made it in the door. She’d just climbed out of the social worker’s car and was standing on the nature strip when the boy approached from behind. She was six, the boy was thirteen.
She didn’t see it coming. One minute she was standing there, the next she was doubled over, struggling for breath. Her case worker, who’d been fetching her garbage bag from the boot, scolded the boy, demanding to know why he’d done it.
‘Because she’s new,’ he said. His tone said duh.
Norah hadn’t understood at the time, but she soon did. She even came to appreciate it. A swift punch was akin to an orientation. It taught you who was in charge, who to look out for and where you stood.
Before long, Norah had learned to brace for the first punch. Not long after that, she learned to throw it.
It vexed Norah that the rest of the world didn’t operate this way. It would have been useful, for example, if Miss Fairchild had given her a swift punch that first day. At least then she would’ve known what was coming.
At bedtime, Jessica used the bathroom first, then Norah. Jessica explained this to Norah as if it were very important. When Norah was finished, she returned to find the room in darkness.
She stopped in the doorway. The bedroom had a sloping ceiling and a dormer window and the blind was drawn. Once the door was closed, it would be hard to see anything at all. Norah had never liked darkness. She had a dim memory of having been blindfolded once. The details were hazy, but she remembered laughter (someone else’s) . . . and terror (her own). Years later, even though she understood she wasn’t in danger, her body didn’t seem to care. It still heard the laughter and felt the terror.
‘I put your clothes away,’ Jessica said. She was already in one of the wrought-iron twin beds; in the darkness Norah could see the S-shaped mound under the covers. ‘I think you’ll find the system makes sense. Undies in the top drawer, then tops and jumpers, then pants. Dresses are in the wardrobe.’
‘Thanks,’ Norah said. If the exacting way Jessica lined up her things on her dresser was any measure of the way she did things – everything at right angles and organised by like (hair care, dental care etc.) – Norah assumed she would have done a reasonable job of it.
‘Are you going to come in?’ Jessica asked.
Norah didn’t move. Her heels dug into the floorboards, as if someone was preparing to push her inside.
She was still standing that way when Miss Fairchild appeared a moment later. She was wearing the pink dress from earlier but the lipstick and eyeshadow had been washed off and her face looked like a blank, creamy moon. ‘Is everything all right, Norah?’
‘I don’t like the dark.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ She seemed delighted to be able to help, marching downstairs and returning a minute or two later with a lamp. ‘Will this do?’
Norah took the lamp. There was a white wooden bedside table next to her bed, and a power point was visible beside it. ‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘Nope,’ Norah said. She crossed the room, plugged in the lamp, and climbed into her bed, pulling the blankets around her. To her surprise, Miss Fairchild followed, sitting on the edge of her bed. When she bent to plant a kiss on Norah’s forehead, Norah held her breath.
After she’d left the room, Norah wiped furiously at the spot Miss Fairchild’s lips had touched.
‘That was a mistake,’ Jessica said.
Norah rolled over in bed. ‘What was?’
‘Telling her what you were afraid of,’ Jessica said. ‘One day, that will come back to bite you.’
9
NORAH
BEFORE
For the first few weeks at Wild Meadows, Norah just watched. Having been a foster child for most of her life, she’d learned it was a good idea to get the lie of the land early. The more information you gleaned in the early days of a placement – a foster father’s pet peeves, the fact that meals only came once a day, or that the first one up got their pick of the shared clothing – the better. So she learned that Miss Fairchild was a woman of routine who spent most of her time cleaning. She drank wine, but not a worrying amount, and thus far it had not preceded violence or rage. She liked conversation to revolve around herself. And she was exceptionally frugal.
‘It’s not cheap to run the farm and to feed and clothe you,’ Miss Fairchild said as she served up a meal that seemed to Norah to be lacking in both quantity and nutrition. After a few weeks of it, Norah felt hunger gnawing day and night.
Also notable was the fact that Miss Fairchild knew things. Things she shouldn’t rightfully know – like the fact that Norah ate her entire lunch at recess rather than splitting it into recess and lunchtime, or that she’d stopped at the skate park for a few minutes on the way home from school to play on the abandoned board she’d found.
Miss Fairchild also appeared to like Norah, which was both good and bad. She’d had foster parents who had taken an instant dislike to her and that never worked out well. At the same time, she’d learned to be leery of adults who liked her too much.
‘You did the laundry?’ Miss Fairchild would exclaim when Norah performed her allocated chore. ‘What on earth did we do without you?’
It was bizarre. Norah might have written her off as one of those oddly nice people – like Dulcie, the receptionist at her previous school, who called everyone ‘sweet babycakes’ – except that, unlike Dulcie, Miss Fairchild wasn’t nice all the time. She was unpredictable, lashing out unexpectedly – usually at Jessica, who followed her around like a puppy dog, working overtime to get her attention. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. For the life of her, Norah couldn’t work out why she bothered.
Still, Norah fell into a routine eventually. (It was annoying, because getting into a routine usually guaranteed she’d be yanked out of it without notice or explanation and planted somewhere new. For this reason, she hadn’t bothered asking Scott if this would be a permanent placement. She knew the answer would be, ‘If you’re lucky,’ and if Norah had figured out one thing by now, it was that she wasn’t.) School was part of this routine. Unlike most kids her age, Norah enjoyed school immensely. It was one of the few places where she could know with reasonable certainty what was going to happen. At her new school – one of those small country town places housing prep through to Year 12 and grouping two or even three year levels into one classroom – each day started with circle time, then literacy, then maths, then sport. As usual, maths was her favourite subject, but she enjoyed nearly all the lessons, apart from art, which was unnecessarily messy and had no discernible point.
Norah was aware that she was extremely intelligent. The teachers were always saying so. Norah and Jessica were grouped together, so Norah knew that Jessica was (surprisingly) smart too, and (unsurprisingly) extremely eager to please, always putting her hand up, always volunteering to help the teacher. Like Norah, she seemed happiest in the classroom. Jessica spent most of her lunchtimes in the library or alone in the playground, while Norah spent them scavenging for leftover food or picking fights. One such lunchtime, she had just discovered an uneaten apple on the grass when she heard a commotion.
