Ballad for a Mad Girl Read online

  ‘Maybe.’ She shrugs. ‘Maybe not. Anyway, everyone knows there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on with you that you’re not telling anyone.’

  Like her. My gaze slides to the closed door of the third cubicle. The latch says it’s unoccupied, but that’s hardly reassuring. I felt her with me in the car and again when I sat at the table. She’s not in here. My head’s clear and there’s no buzz, just the echo of our voices and the unmarked grey tiles on the walls and floor.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Amber says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Anyway, how do you know I haven’t tried to tell you? It’s not like you’re around to tell.’ I slide off the counter. ‘And you wouldn’t believe me if I did. Kenzie doesn’t believe me.’

  ‘Try me now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Everything is a front with you, Grace.’ She scrapes her make-up into her open bag. ‘Kenzie says you make so much stuff up, you don’t know what the truth is anymore. She says you need professional help, and I’m inclined to agree.’

  I know what’s true—I just don’t know what’s real.

  ‘Oh. You’re inclined,’ I say nastily.

  ‘See, there it is. You’re not even listening. You’re trying to stuff me back into my trashy box. Screw you, McJudgy.’ She’s out the door.

  I’ve been dying to say the same thing for weeks. I’m speechless because she beat me to it.

  ‘Screw you!’ I yell at the swinging door.

  Dad’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper. Cody hasn’t slept in his own bed for the last two nights—I assume he stays with one of the girlfriends he never brings home. It’s 6.30 a.m. I hardly slept apart from a few hours of sweaty half-dreams. My hands are shaking as I make coffee, toast and fried eggs.

  ‘You’re up early,’ Dad mutters. ‘What gives?’

  I shrug and pass him a plate. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Work? It’s the first day of the holidays. When did you ever surface before eleven?’

  ‘I’m doing a project on urban legends. Swanston’s urban legends.’ I take a deep breath and say, all in a rush, ‘Specifically the case of Hannah Holt and William Dean. You knew her, right? It’s been over twenty years. Do you think the police would let me look at the files?’

  ‘I knew of her.’ Dad barely looks up from the newspaper. ‘There was no case.’

  ‘What do you mean there was no case?’

  ‘There was no evidence of a crime.’

  ‘But she was murdered.’

  He sighs and stabs an egg yolk with his fork. ‘There was no evidence of murder and William Dean was never charged. It was a rumour, and you know how damaging rumours can be when people give them too much oxygen.’ He throws me a glance. ‘As far as I know she’s still a missing person. There was nothing but circumstantial evidence and talk.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘There are far more interesting urban legends for you to dig up, I’m sure.’

  It’s the longest conversation we’ve had in months. I want to keep him talking, but his lips are getting thinner by the second.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘I told you, I heard of her. Everybody did.’

  ‘So, if I was to interview anyone—for my project—if I had to ask questions, who would I ask?’

  He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What kind of idiot would set a task like this?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘It happened a long time ago,’ I say.

  His head swivels slowly and he glares at me like he wants me to shut up for good. ‘There are people involved who are still living. It’s been twenty-three years, to be exact, and that still isn’t long enough. What, you think a bit of time goes by and it stops hurting?’

  I sit in the chair across from him and set my plate down. The eggs are undercooked, swimming in grease. ‘But what if I found something nobody else found? What if I got answers when no one else ever did?’ What if I had help from the grave?

  Dad suddenly pushes his own plate away, the breakfast only half-eaten. ‘I know it won’t be the first time anybody’s told you, but your brother came out half-asleep and never really woke up, and you came out squalling and swinging your fists and you never stopped.’ He hands me a knife and fork. ‘I’ll tell you something else that never stops, Grace. The sorrow. The pain. The missing. Get that through your head. You don’t go opening wounds that aren’t your business to open.’ He stands, picks up his plate, slides the contents into the bin and slams it into the sink. ‘Now, eat. Get some sun. You’re starting to look like a ghost, and God knows we’ve got enough of those around here.’

  Getting some sun is the last thing on my mind.

  I spend most of the day in semi-darkness, sitting at my computer in my room, scratching up details, building a profile and a timeline of events beginning with the disappearance of Hannah Holt and ending with William Dean’s suicide a year later. Though her story begins before and echoes long after those days, I have to begin somewhere.

  I know what she looked like: tall and slim at five feet, ten inches. Fair skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. Straight, perfect teeth, apart from a chipped incisor. In all the cropped photos showing her wearing a school uniform, disembodied arms of fellow students are draped across her shoulders, and those shoulders are thin and rounded as if she had curvature of the spine or was self-conscious of her height. Every photo shows her smiling.

  I know where she lived: Davey Street, South Swanston. There are pictures online of both houses—Hannah’s, and William Dean’s just a few streets away—along with a shot of her bedroom window. Reports say they knew each other, but they weren’t friends. I find a few grainy images of a taped-off crime scene—it looks like a patch of generic bushland, but a different article tells me it’s the steep gully behind the Holt house. Police had discovered a makeshift fort—the kind a child might make—high up in a tree, and they found evidence that William Dean had slept there. It was alleged that he watched the house. The police found pictures, and Susannah Holt said she knew someone was watching the house before her daughter disappeared. They were both afraid.

  But the only solid evidence linking William to Hannah was the tip of a fingernail and a few blonde hairs found in his car—easily explained when William admitted he’d given Hannah a ride to school three weeks before she went missing. He denied everything. The investigation stalled. In desperation, Susannah Holt copied and distributed hundreds of flyers, placing them in letterboxes and under windscreen wipers, in an attempt to fan the dying embers of the case; it was not Hannah’s Missing poster but a copy of a poem supposedly written by William Dean—the angry, bitter ramblings of a boy, about a girl, who didn’t love him back. And although Susannah Holt is shown holding the flyer, her eyes black with grief, the words on the flyer are blocked out, censored by the newspaper. William Dean’s parents are pictured below, scurrying away from the camera, their arms crooked over their faces.

  The stories rehash the same details over a period of about nine months, dwindling away from front page news and double spreads to a few sad lines on the back pages. Then, nothing—until William Dean jumped.

  Each time I pencil in another detail, I picture Hannah’s scattered bones, rising from the earth, brushed clean of dirt, skittering, clattering, reassembling and locking into place; I imagine her shadow in the corner grows longer. In a way, just thinking about her is bringing her back to life.

  She’s not with me, though. Not today. When I’m looking for her, she disappears.

  I uncurl the portrait I drew and spread it out on the desk. The charcoal is starting to smear as if she’s been left out in the rain. The movement of her arm makes her appear as if she’s waving goodbye. She isn’t smiling.

  I know what she looked like, where she lived—all these scattered bones. But it’s near impossible to find out who she was.

  *

  On Tuesday, I haul my dusty bike out
of the shed, grease the chain, check the tyre pressure, and tie a folded tea towel onto the seat to cover a broken spring. Dad and Cody are at work. Dad has left a note in the kitchen instructing me to vacuum upstairs and downstairs, hang out a load of washing, and pressure-clean the oil stains that Gummer’s truck has left on the driveway.

  The stains will have to wait.

  I haven’t ridden since Kenzie and I were thirteen or so, back when we lived much further apart and our bikes were the closest things to freedom. Staying on isn’t as easy as I remember. I wobble and stall. I panic, swerving away from passing cars. The bike’s too small—my knees clip the handlebars—and though I’m taller now the ground seems further away. By the sixth or seventh block I’m sweating. The broken spring sticks into my thigh and I’ve grated the skin from both ankle bones.

  On the newer, northern side of Swanston, where we live, the streets crisscross in a perfect grid and every road leads out of town. Here, to the south, about a twenty-minute ride away, the land rises ever so slightly and the roads are twisty-turny. There are no shortcuts, no alleys, just looping streets that end in cul-de-sacs and shallow gullies. The houses aren’t grander but the yards are bigger, the fences low, and the gum trees have been allowed to stay.

  I pull out a sheet of paper from my pocket: a pencilled sketch of a map. I should have printed a copy—the paper is damp and the street names are smudged. In the middle of the road, in front of a block of units, a couple of boys are playing cricket.

  ‘Do you know where I can find Davey Street?’

  One shrugs; the other points away from the direction I’m heading. I turn the bike around.

  I must be close. It’s too quiet. Sparrows huddle together in a knot on a power line. A sharp burst of needle rain hits my face. Winter’s coming. The scent of wet earth rises, and I get a sudden pang of homesickness. I miss the farmhouse. I miss knowing that my best memories are contained in one place, a place where generations of Foleys have carved their names in the skin of the same ancient pepper tree and swung across the same winter creek in an old tractor tyre. The cycle is broken now.

  Twice I get lost, pedalling up winding streets that go nowhere, until I find it. Davey Street. About six houses along, it rises to a steep crest. The house I’m looking for must be on the other side. I stop at the end of the street and get off the bike. I have the brief sensation of falling, the way you do when you miss the bottom step. My nerves are humming, as if any second I might get caught doing something wrong.

  It’s ridiculous—nobody knows me here.

  A blonde girl, three or four years younger, appears. She has an old canvas shopping trolley and a backpack. Her arms are filled with bundles of catalogues. She glances at me curiously, smiling as she passes.

  I give her a small wave. It takes me a few seconds to realise she has come back.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I wipe the sweat from my upper lip. ‘I’m fine. I just overdid it.’ I point to the catalogues. ‘Does it pay?’

  She shakes her head. ‘It’s slave labour. It takes way longer to sort and fold them than it does to deliver them.’ She holds out her hands: her fingers are stained with ink, the tips of two covered with bandaids. ‘I’m quitting as soon as I’ve saved up enough for a phone.’

  ‘You deliver here?’ I look up at the street sign.

  She nods. ‘Most of them say No Junk Mail, but I have to do it anyway. They check.’

  ‘I’ll do it if you like,’ I say.

  She steps back.

  ‘It’s okay. I live here.’ Pants on fire. ‘It’ll save you the walk.’

  She searches my face and what she sees seems to frighten her; she thrusts a bundle of catalogues into my hands and turns her trolley around. ‘You’re not joking? If you don’t deliver and they check, I won’t get paid.’

  ‘No jokes here.’

  ‘You sure you’re okay? You look kind of…funny.’

  I secure the catalogues under the snap-strap on the rear of my bike. ‘Funny how? There are two kinds.’ I was funny-ha-ha. Now I’m funny-peculiar. I smile but I want her to go.

  She’s already walking away. As I wheel my bike up the hill she calls, ‘Good luck to you,’ in a tone that makes her sound older.

  How does she know I might need it?

  I check each letterbox and slip bundles of catalogues into those without stickers, working my way up the even-numbered side. After the crest, the street dips sharply. This must be about the highest point in Swanston, which isn’t saying much. There’s no one around and most of the driveways are empty. I feel a magnetic pull in my belly—at first I dismiss it as gravity, the weight of the bike dragging me down the hill, but as I approach the house I change my mind. It’s dread.

  I swing my leg over the bike and coast along slowly, clutching the handbrake.

  It’s the last house at the bottom of the cul-de-sac. I recognise it from newspaper photos, but it goes deeper than that: a prickling familiarity, as if I’ve been here before, many times, and I feel strangely desolate that it’s not the way I remember it. The weatherboard planks are buckled, flaking grey paint, like a disease. The curtains are drawn. Where a smooth driveway once curved across the garden, there are broken chunks of concrete, as if giant hands were pressing them up from underneath. My eye is drawn to the smallest window facing the street. An enormous, twisted pepper tree stretches its limbs in all directions but one: the bough leading to the window has been hacked off. The Holt house slouches between two neat cream-brick buildings with tidy gardens: left behind, forgotten.

  It looks like I feel when I’m between Kenzie and Mitch.

  The handbrake grips and the front wheel wobbles. To avoid losing control and crashing through the front yard, I hop off and let go. The bike tips over and skids across the road. I pick it up, lean it against a tree, and pull out the other sheet of paper.

  The photo they used on Hannah Holt’s Missing poster shows her smiling, forever seventeen. It’s hard to accept that this girl is the same girl I drew, but the proof is there. It’s in her eyes, the way they slant at the outer edges; it’s in the curve of her cheek and the set of her mouth. And the window: there was a photo in a news article, a closeup of the chipped frame to show a likely entry point for an intruder. I remember drawing the catch with its curved edge, just the right shape for a thumb.

  It was easy enough to find the articles. Her disappearance was front page news for months: a young girl went missing and no trace of her could be found. The only child of a single mother—who worked two jobs to pay for the privilege of a Sacred Heart education—she earned a partial scholarship to university. It wasn’t long before the news reports took a darker turn: in the months leading up to her disappearance, Hannah Holt had become withdrawn. She stopped eating and skipped classes.

  Her mother said someone was watching the house.

  The thought hits me like a punch to the chest, but it isn’t fear—it’s a sharp spike of fury, and it’s not mine.

  ‘What?’ I whisper. ‘You have to help me. I don’t know what I have to do.’

  A dense cloud passes across the face of the sun; a flurry of dead leaves dances around my feet. Something brushes past my cheek and my heart trebles its beat. Caw. A lone crow drifts in lazy circles above. Overhead, the power lines are humming, and the pitch is maddening. I cup my hands over my ears and lean against the tree. My vision is leached of colour, sepia-toned—it’s as if I’m the only person breathing in an abandoned world.

  It isn’t safe here. But here is where I’m meant to be.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  It’s Hannah Holt’s mother, standing among the weeds near the letterbox, where the beginning of the immaculate driveway used to be. She’s wearing mismatched trackpants and a striped shirt, slippers on her feet. No bra. Her hair is as neglected as the rest of her: greying frizz with straw-blonde tips.

  Where the driveway used to be? Waiting for me?

  ‘I want my specials. You’re a day late,’ she says
.

  ‘Sorry.’ I fumble with the strap on the back of my bike and hand her a bundle.

  ‘You’re new.’ Her expression is sly, as if she knows a secret I don’t. ‘Catalogues come on Mondays and Thursdays. Don’t force them through the slot or they tear, and don’t leave them poking out or they get wet. Walk around and put them in through the opening. It’s not locked.’

  I nod.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Grace,’ I say, without thinking.

  ‘Mondays and Thursdays, remember.’ She taps a dirty yellow fingernail on the top of the letterbox. ‘It’s not difficult. Not like, say…riding a bike.’

  She was watching me. She grins, but with her blackened teeth it looks like a grimace.

  As I pedal away I think I hear the scuff of her slippers as she goes back into the house, but when I look over my shoulder she’s still standing there clutching the catalogues, staring at her feet. It’s as if she’s forgotten why she’s there; if she waits long enough it’ll come to her. Or someone will come to her.

  I wonder if a mother grieves longer for a child than a child grieves for her mother. I wonder if I should tell her she should stop waiting.

  I’m lying in bed listening to the steady hum of the tank’s filter, staring at a patch of light travelling across the floor. It’s proof that the world turns and time passes. I’m not sure what time it is—one, maybe two. Twice, I’ve fallen asleep only to wake again seconds later. Falling. It’s exactly like that—a long, slow dive. But something always snags me on the way down. It’s happening every night now. I’ve forgotten how to fall.

  The headboard of my bed butts against the wall by the window. The bed is too heavy to move by myself. When I’m lying on it I can’t help staring into the hallway—red-tinted black like the inside of a throat—and the yawning emptiness of the stairwell. If I close my eyes, it’s worse. I could shut the door but it makes me feel trapped. I’ve tried sleeping on the couch, tried Cody’s room, since he’s rarely home, but when I’m downstairs Diesel stalks me like a silent shadow. Once, I woke to feel his meaty breath on my face.