Ballad for a Mad Girl Read online

  ‘Oh, my goodness,’ says a voice. It’s the woman in overalls. ‘Are you okay? Is anything broken?’

  I run my hands over my body—for her benefit, not my own. Nothing is broken. Down here nothing hurts.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I warned you about the open pits.’ She peers down at me, her forehead wrinkled. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll be back.’ She disappears and returns a few minutes later with a three-step ladder. ‘Here. Grab the end.’

  The moment I climb out of the pit, my head aches. The sun is beating down and there’s a crow sitting on the wing of Maria’s angel. Crows are everywhere, common as clouds, I tell myself, but I still feel sick.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t see it.’ I slip my sunglasses back on.

  ‘I don’t know how you could miss it.’ She points to the tape barrier. I must have torn it when I fell: an orange streamer lies limp on the ground.

  ‘What’s the hole for?’

  She laughs. ‘It’s waiting for a new one.’ She notices my bafflement. ‘Disinterment. Exhumation. You know, dug up.’ She tucks the ladder under her arm. ‘You be on your way now.’

  I head towards the gate. I’m careful not to look back too soon, but when I do she’s still staring after me.

  ‘Girl,’ she calls. ‘Mind where you step.’

  Dad and Cody are working in the garage. The roller-door is up—Cody’s top half is underneath the car and Dad is on all fours, his cheek pressed against the grease-caked floor, bellowing instructions. I pause at the entrance. I count at least a dozen empty beer bottles on the workbench and it’s only two o’clock. Dad has no work again.

  ‘Chores, Grace.’ He must have eyes in the back of his head. ‘And you went out this morning and left the house unlocked.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I look up at my bedroom window. I left that open, too. The curtain is puffing in, out, in, out, as if the house is panting.

  ‘It ain’t like being on the farm. Lock up. You should know that by now.’

  Oh, I do. And it ain’t.

  Diesel is snuffling at the crack under the front door, waiting for a sock or a limb. Out of nowhere I remember one of Mum’s old superstitions: enter a house the same way you left, or bad luck will follow. But I can’t remember if Gummer and I left through the front door or the back. For a moment, I freeze. I know I’m being ridiculous—what I have following me around is far worse than the bad luck that follows breaking a mirror, walking under a ladder, or leaving new shoes on a table.

  I open the front door halfway and reach for the sock basket. Diesel has gone. I throw the door wide open and survey the entry: a metre from the doorstep, on the plush cream carpet, there’s a foul dark-reddish stain the size of a dinner plate. I step around it, sniffing the air. The stain looks fresh. Vomit? Blood? And still no Diesel. I check the ceiling. If I drew a vertical line straight up, directly above the stain is the spot in my room where the inky puddle appeared. And on the ceiling there’s a familiar shape. A mad beat starts up in my chest again and I take a long blink—but no, it’s real and it’s still there.

  It’s not the stain, or the memory of the puddle, or the fact that Diesel is probably plotting an ambush that makes me back away.

  It’s the star.

  A tiny, plastic phosphorescent star, like the ones Mum glued in a swirling constellation above my bed when I was little. One was always different from the rest: deformed, with a lopsided sixth point. A factory reject, Mum called it. I complained it wasn’t like the rest. When the lights went out and the other stars glowed, I would fixate on the imperfect one; if I had been able to reach the ceiling I would have plucked it down and thrown it away, but by the time I was tall enough, the stars had stopped glowing and I didn’t care anymore.

  It’s the star.

  I turn around.

  Dad’s close behind me. ‘Before you say anything, it wasn’t me,’ he says.

  ‘How…what…?’ I stammer. It’s official. I’m losing my mind.

  He brushes past, stepping around the stain. I’m so relieved that it’s real, I almost cry.

  ‘Your brother kicked over a container of engine oil. We didn’t know what to use to get it out.’ He shrugs, looking shamefaced. ‘Figured you might.’

  Somehow, I manage to sound completely normal. ‘Baking soda and lemon juice.’

  His expression softens; I know he’s thinking about Mum. But he shakes it off and the crease reappears. ‘Could you clean it up?’ He leaves without waiting for an answer, before I can ask him if he can see the star too.

  I stumble out to the garage. ‘Cody,’ I say to the legs.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you drive me somewhere?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Then when?’

  ‘Depends where you want to go.’

  ‘It’ll just take half an hour.’

  ‘Not now, Grace.’ He slides even further under the Celica until only his feet are showing.

  I stamp my foot and let out a frustrated shriek.

  Cody ignores me.

  At the far end of the garage, Diesel materialises from behind a stack of boxes—boxes filled with stuff we don’t need, and probably the things we couldn’t bear to unpack. I tense up, ready to move to higher ground, but Diesel’s hackles are down. His tongue’s hanging out and his tail’s swinging.

  The healing wound on my thumb throbs. Dread has pooled in my stomach. There’s something terrifying about a smile on a dog.

  I’ve never stolen a car before. Technically, Kenzie stole the teacher’s car—I only moved it. I could walk to the Holt house, or catch the bus, but Cody’s car is right there and his keys are sitting on the table by the front door. He and Dad have gone out in the truck, so I figure I have at least an hour before they come home, if not most of the day.

  I take the backstreets. There’s not much traffic. It’s a wet-dog day in Swanston. I can’t explain why the town smells like that some days; the slightest drop of rain after a dust storm and everything stinks like sodden sheepdog—your hair, your clothes, your skin. Old boots on cold days, mouldy hay when it’s hot. I’m sure there are towns smelling of pine forests or salty air or fish, but Swamptown, for as long as I can remember, has only had three base notes and two kinds of people. I used to think those two kinds were Hearts and Swampies, but now I believe they’ve the living and the dead.

  Last night, somehow, I slept through the night without waking. Before I got into bed, I knelt beside it and I made promises to Hannah Holt—like saying prayers, but with more conviction—and I climbed onto a kitchen chair, took down the star, and fell asleep with it under my pillow. A weight lifted. I thought: love, hate, desire, the trappings of the soul—maybe they don’t exist on only one plane. What if ghosts are all around us, all of the time? What if they’re not always stuck, unable to move on until earthly justice is done—what if they’re just existing, loving, hating, desiring, like us? Maybe it takes someone like me—in the middle, not really living—to close the gap.

  The star is safely tucked in the zip pocket of my jeans. Cody’s car is almost out of petrol. Desperate to get my purse and phone back, I ignore the gauge, which is showing empty. I pull up just around the corner from Davey Street and park facing downhill, just in case.

  ‘You’re not really the catalogue girl,’ Susannah Holt says when she answers the door. She’s wrapped in a fluffy dressing-gown, slippers on her feet. Her eyes are flat and cold as a shark’s. ‘She came after I dropped you off. I asked her and she said she didn’t know who you were.’

  ‘I’m not the catalogue girl,’ I confirm.

  ‘You don’t live next door to Reilly’s.’

  I shake my head. ‘I just wanted to ask you…questions.’

  Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘Grace Alice Foley, born in the millennium, thirty-six Raymond Street. Swanston Public student.’ She smirks at my expression. ‘Your driver’s licence and student ID card. I checked. I was going to return your things but then I had a funny feeling you might be back.’

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sp; ‘I didn’t forget them on purpose,’ I say. Did I?

  ‘No?’ She’s weighing me up, running her sharp eyes over my face and body. ‘Did you crash into my front yard on purpose?’ She laughs. ‘I take it back. Nobody’s that stupid. Come inside, Grace Alice. I have questions of my own for you.’ She steps away from the door, leaving me to let myself in.

  I follow her into the kitchen. My purse and phone are on the counter. I’m already inventing excuses but she sits down at the kitchen table, leans back in the chair and continues her silent assessment.

  I pick up my things: my purse is zipped, my phone screen blank, out of charge. It had a few hairline cracks in one corner before—now it’s completely fractured, diagonally, with a spider web of smaller cracks almost covering the screen. ‘Did you drop it?’ I blurt.

  ‘I did no such thing,’ she says.

  The hairs on my arms stand up. It’s cold in here, a gully breeze gusting through the open window behind us. A baby’s crying somewhere. Or perhaps it’s the wind.

  ‘Thanks but I need to get going,’ I say. ‘I took my brother’s car without asking.’

  Her lips pinch. ‘You’re not the first to try to sneak in here, you know. All those wannabe sleuths and journalists, thinking they’ve found a missing piece of the puzzle, thinking they’ll be the one to find her. They snoop and lie and try to trick me. It gets so I hardly leave the house. And just when I think I’ve gone a couple of days without thinking about her, just when I think this town’s forgotten her, someone like you comes along to bring her back.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  I’m so ashamed—this poor woman, grieving her dead child. I want to tell her everything I know, but it doesn’t make sense, even to me.

  Unexpectedly, she smiles. ‘It’s important that we never forget, don’t you think? When we forget, they’re truly gone.’ She gets up. ‘Come with me.’ She heads up the stairs, turning back once to make sure I’m following.

  I’m following. I can’t not.

  Halfway up, the staircase turns ninety degrees, opening into a long hallway with five doors, all closed. It’s dim up here and it smells stale, like the air has been sitting still for a long time. Mrs Holt treads close to the walls as if she doesn’t want to mark the lines of vacuum tracks on the carpet. I do the same. The walls are bare, painted a flat, yellowish cream. There are no pictures of Hannah upstairs.

  She stops near the last room on the left. ‘I don’t come up here often,’ she confides, her hand resting on the doorknob. ‘And I wouldn’t have, but your phone started ringing and I came to see. It took a while, but I found it on the floor under her bed.’

  ‘My phone?’ I say, confused. ‘But I left it in the bathroom, on the ledge. With my purse.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Don’t lie. I can’t stand a liar,’ she barks. ‘What I want to know is, how did you sneak up here? And did you find what you were looking for?’ She throws the door open and a dusty shaft of daylight brightens the hallway.

  ‘I didn’t…’

  She takes my elbow and steers me into the room. ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ she says. ‘I was too upset to tidy up. Then I thought, she’ll be back, she can do it.’

  I wonder who she’s talking about and realise it’s me.

  In the corner nearest the window, there’s a single bed covered with a pale blue quilt and a white three-drawer cabinet. A matching bookcase and desk are against the wall by the door. Everything else, barring some posters on the walls, is in a pile on the floor. The drawers are open, empty. Mrs Holt blocks the doorway, flapping her hands at the mess: books, clothing, brushes and make-up, lotions and hairclips and sheets of paper. The make-up has crumbled and spilt, leaving streaks of colour on the carpet. As I stand gaping, the last corner of tape holding one of Hannah Holt’s posters rips free; the poster sails off the wall and curls up on the bed. We both jump.

  She thinks I did this.

  ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ she says, holding up her palms.

  I’m motionless, mouth hanging open, unable to say anything to defend myself or to make her feel better. Truth is, I’m waiting, too. Waiting to sense her presence; Hannah Holt should be here, in her bedroom, with her possessions, the things she loved.

  With her mother.

  I bend down and start picking up lipsticks and eye shadows, placing them carefully in a cane basket. When I’ve finished, I shuffle the loose sheets of paper into a neat pile and place her battered paperbacks on the bookshelves. I leave the clothing until last, holding my breath as my fingers touch a lace bra with tiny blue flowers. I expect it to be soft and delicate, but the lace is hard and brittle.

  Mrs Holt bites her lip. Her hand twitches at her side. I don’t feel anything except sadness for her.

  I put the bra away in a drawer and close it gently.

  ‘You can stop,’ she says, staring out of the window. ‘It wasn’t you. I can tell by the way you’re touching her things. I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t you.’

  ‘But my phone…’

  Her eyes dart my way. ‘It was under the bed. Down there.’ She points. ‘I’ve no reason to lie. I can’t stand a liar.’

  I get to my feet. Mrs Holt moves away from the doorway and I tense up, ready to flee.

  She raises a shaking finger. ‘He watched her. He would sit on the branch and watch her.’

  A shiver travels up my spine.

  She climbs onto the bed, unravels the poster, and tries to put it back on the wall. The tape won’t stick. Her hands battle to smooth the curling paper, losing, until she gives up and just holds it there, her hands leaving dirty black smudges on the white wall.

  The poster is in direct line of sight of the tree, where the branch used to be. It’s not a poster after all. It’s a drawing—a simple charcoal sketch of seven crows, like musical notes, sitting on a power line.

  I park Cody’s car exactly where I found it and let myself into the house, still buzzing with adrenalin. Diesel’s outside, barking at the back fence. I rush to the laundry and bolt the dog-door before he can come inside, toss my purse on the dining-room table and plug in my phone. I need to see the call log: whoever moved it—and used it—is likely to be the same person who trashed Hannah Holt’s room. But why now? She’s been gone for so long.

  I wait for my phone to start but the battery is dead. I need coffee, but the canister’s empty. I should try to draw the crows now, I think, as I rummage in the pantry for our emergency jar of instant. Their shapes are still fresh in my mind. Of one thing I’m certain: Hannah drew the crows, and it was her hand guiding mine to draw her portrait. There was a strong similarity of style—the way the lines blurred, the smattering of light on the wings. But there was not enough time to study them. As I was leaving, Susannah Holt seemed to collapse in on herself. She kept muttering sorry, sorry, over and over, but I wasn’t sure who she was apologising to. I got the feeling the room had been preserved when Hannah went missing, and now it would never be the same.

  The emergency coffee is nowhere to be found. I turn around. The light from the kitchen window outlines a hulking shape near the breakfast bar. I throw up my hands in fright. I have nowhere to run. I grab the nearest box of cereal and launch it.

  The shadow bats it away easily.

  Cody is furious. ‘What the hell, Grace?’ He picks up the box and ditches it back, hitting my shoulder. ‘You took my car?’

  ‘I thought I could be there and back before you got home!’ My voice is high-pitched with panic. ‘Jesus, Cod-face, don’t creep up on people. You scared me.’

  ‘You could’ve asked,’ he yells. ‘That’s the last time I cover for you.’

  ‘I did ask. Yesterday.’ I push past him and try my phone again. The screen lights up.

  ‘You asked for a ride. You didn’t ask if you could drive it.’ He stabs his finger into my shoulder.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Say it like you mean it. I was supposed to start work over an hour ago.
’

  ‘Sorry!’ I have dozens of notifications and missed calls. ‘I’ve got to check this.’

  Six calls from Kenzie’s number and two texts. My heart starts up a glad beat. I’ll go up to my room and read them in private. But Cody yanks the phone out of my hand and holds it up high, too high to reach. I jump at it, but he bats me away as easily as the cereal box.

  ‘Give it back. It’s mine!’

  He laughs. ‘Go ahead, throw a tantrum, problem child.’

  ‘It’s important!’

  ‘So is my job.’ He grabs his car keys from where I left them on the table, slips my phone into his shirt pocket and scoops up the spare set of farm keys from a hook on the side of the fridge. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  ‘The farm? Why?’

  We go back occasionally to pick up things. It’s always painful.

  ‘This is for your benefit.’

  ‘What benefit? You know I get sad when I go there.’

  ‘It’s only on lease, Grace. We might go back one day.’

  I sigh and give in. ‘Cody?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Your petrol tank is empty.’

  I believed Dad when he said a fresh start would be a good thing. He’d have more time to spend with us now Mum was gone. Cody wouldn’t have to drive the deadly twenty-kilometre stretch of highway into Swanston twice a day, and I’d be closer to my friends and school. But I learned to tune in to the way Dad’s tone hit a high note—a good thing?—and he said it too often, as if he was trying to convince us, and himself.

  Later, after we’d moved to the estate, Cody let it slip that we had to give up the farm because Dad couldn’t afford to pay the bills; our livestock were sick and underfed, and the dams were running thin on clay, leaking precious rainwater. The Johnson family next door were cashed up but land-poor; they offered to take a five-year lease. Dad accepted. We had our fresh start. But I knew there was another reason we left—long days on the land were long hours Cody and I were left to our own devices. I knew by the way Dad shouted for me if I was out of his sight for too long and Cody knew it, too, when Dad made him call ten times a day.