Friday Brown (29 page)

I stretched out on the back seat and closed my eyes… Troy Cassar-Daly. ‘Everything’s gonna be alright’.

I smiled again. You could find relevance in anything if you looked hard enough.

Grandfather passed his jacket over the seat for me to rest my head on, and drove.

He said nothing.

The stop-start motion of the car and the smell of exhaust told me we were nearing the city. I saw landmarks and buildings that didn’t seem alien anymore, just different from what I was used to.

‘You’re awake. Where do you want me to take you?’

I had assumed he would take me back to his house. I figured he’d lock the door and hide the key and spend the next ten years lecturing me about how irresponsible I’d been. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he was letting me go again.

‘The train station,’ I said quietly. I added, ‘Thank you.’

‘You need to be available for questioning. I gave my word.’

‘I’ll be around.’

He sighed like he didn’t believe me. ‘Did you find him?’

‘Who?’

‘Your father.’

‘What makes you think I was looking for him?’

‘It’s human nature. To want to know where you came from.’

‘It doesn’t matter that much to me anymore.’

It didn’t. If I couldn’t find all the pieces of me within myself, I sure as hell wouldn’t find them in a stranger.

My life would always be full of unanswered questions. I would always wonder if, had I taken another direction, Silence would have lived. I’d always regret my fascination with Arden and my desire to be like her. I would question my past, whether Vivienne was somebody I ever knew at all. Did the stories come first? Or did I? Did I survive because of everything that Vivienne taught me, or is there something at work that I’ll never be able to explain? Growing up is made up of a million
small moments in time, and one of the most painful is the moment you’re severed from the whole, when you realise that your parent is complicated and fallible and human.

‘You know, where you’ve been isn’t as important as where you’re headed.’

‘Vivienne used to say that,’ I said.

‘Hmm.’

He parked the Mercedes illegally with the end sticking out into traffic. He opened the car door like a chauffeur.

‘There are some things I need to do…’ I said. I picked up the box and got out.

‘Then you have to do them.’ He sighed. ‘I tried, you know. I cut Vivienne off without a cent. Then I tried to bring her back. You, I offered you money and I let you leave. It seems there was no right way to keep either of you.’

I wanted to say something—but I couldn’t find the right words.

He opened his wallet and pulled out a handful of fifty-dollar notes. ‘Don’t argue. And here.’ A mobile phone. ‘I never did figure out how to work the bloody thing. Use it, if you need to.’ He handed me the money and the phone, closed the rear door and stooped to climb in. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. ‘You look just like her.’

He left me blinking on the footpath.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It was atonement, I suppose. Or a pilgrimage, depending on how you look at it. I had this niggling need to put things right. Or as right as I could make them, given the circumstances.

One dead, two missing, six lost—and me. I was none of those things. It was up to me.

I sat on Silence’s bench in the train station for a long time. I watched passengers come and go. A few looked curiously at Arden’s box, like it was possibly a bomb, and to me it was. Tick-ticking away.

I checked the cameras overhead, my figure mirrored in their black, plastic bubbles. I counted them: one, two, three, four. Four different angles. The one nearest to me that must have captured the image in the paper, and the one I wanted—the one I’d hoped for—across the tracks
on the side without pedestrian access.

I couldn’t even remember the exact date I had left Grandfather’s house; it seemed so long ago.

The security guard remembered.

‘I shouldn’t have you in here.’ He frowned and showed me into his office. ‘Come on, then. Just a minute or two.’

He played the recording for that day, that hour, that blink-and-miss-it minute. He replayed it from all four angles, each time whistling a long, low note.

‘I thought you were on drugs,’ he said shaking his head. ‘Nobody thought to rewind further back. We didn’t check the far camera. The police and the papers only have the footage of you. Would you look at that?’

But I couldn’t look. I turned away. It was enough for me to know that Silence wasn’t invisible, that others would see him too.

I bought some new clothes—a T-shirt, underwear, jeans—all a size smaller than I usually wore. I used most of the rest of Grandfather’s money to book a room in an inner-city hotel.

The bored girl at the desk didn’t ask for ID. She didn’t pay any attention to my hacked hair and puffy face. As I handed over the cash I saw that my fingernails were ingrained with red dirt and the palms of my hands were cut and peeling.

The girl gave me a key. She tucked the notes away
in a cash drawer. The whole transaction was completed using about fifteen words.

My room was on the ninth floor. It was basic, not quite clean, but the shower was hot and the soap smelled nice. The cut above my ear stung and throbbed. I avoided washing it but the water still ran pink. In the glare of fluorescent light my legs were covered with purpling bruises, the skin stretched thinly over my bones.

I thought about loneliness. How it’s not something you catch and mostly we choose it. How a trouble shared is a trouble halved but things like love and joy are multiplied when you have someone to share them with. I looked out of the window. On the street below there were hundreds of people—thousands, maybe—going about their business without touching, speaking, or acknowledging each other’s existence.

I sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, and picked up the bedside phone.

The girl answered.

I asked her what number I should call for directories and she replied in an bored, automatic tone. When I thanked her and told her to have a good day, the line went silent for a few seconds.

The girl sounded surprised. ‘Sure. I hope you have everything you need.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

I called the number and got put through.

‘Can I speak to Alison Dunne, please?’

I waited. The on-hold music was interrupted by a
woman saying the call was being diverted. Please hold. I held.

Then she answered. I told her who I was.

Alison Dunne, intern, asked what she could do for me.

And I said, ‘I want to tell you a story.’

Now, the box. Part of me wanted to throw it off a bridge and see it sink below the surface so that any reminder of Arden would be gone forever. I wanted it to fill up with water and mud and drift to the bottom. That would have been a fitting end. I’d been carrying the damned thing around for two days and it was heavy.

After I finished speaking with Alison Dunne, I closed the curtains and sank into the mattress and just lay there, staring at the neon numbers on the clock, thinking I’d never sleep.

I woke up swearing. Morning had come and gone. The blinds were closed and when I whipped them open the sun was high and blazing.

I dressed and took the stairs. I came out in the lobby and the girl behind the desk looked up with a smile. It faltered when she saw my face.

‘Are you okay? Did something happen to you?’

‘I’m fine. Thanks for asking,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back later.’ I felt stupid for saying that—it’s not like I had a curfew.

‘Yes, well, you’ve paid for the week. I figured you
would,’ she said. ‘Are you on holiday? I could give you some brochures.’ She grabbed a handful from the display behind her and shuffled them into order.

‘Thanks, but I think I’ll be here for a funeral.’

‘You think…? Oh.’ She tucked the stack away and clasped her hands in front of her.

‘Actually, it’s more a celebration of a life.’

‘That’s a nice way of looking at it.’

‘I’m Friday,’ I said with my hand on the door.

‘Rebecca. Bec,’ she answered and pointed to her name badge. ‘I’m here if you need anything.’

I thanked her again and stepped out into the sunshine.

It was that easy to get to know a stranger.

The patch of green in the middle of the city was yellowing. The sun had burned the crisp edges of the grass; walkways were littered with bottles and cans. The rearing statue was unchanged except for a few new tagged initials on its rump. I touched a hoof and thought about how we leave our mark on the world—that one man could inspire a monument in the middle of a city but others could only leave their initials behind.

‘Bree,’ I called when I got close.

She was sitting with her back to a tree, headphones in, her eyes closed.

‘I’m back,’ I said.

She opened her eyes. ‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

‘Here I am.’

‘Is it…over? Did they find…?’ She didn’t finish.

‘I’m still waiting to hear. Have you seen the others?’

She wound her headphones around a finger. ‘Yeah, they’re around. Joe’s got his old job back at the markets. AiAi’s with Carrie and Darce most of the time. They’re looking after him.’ She groaned and put her hands over her face. ‘It seems wrong, doesn’t it? To keep on living?’

That was how I’d felt the night I left Grandfather’s house, after Vivienne died. But now I disagreed. ‘Here,’ I said and thrust Arden’s box into her hands.

‘What’s in there?’

‘Open it.’

Bree jiggled the catch. She ran her fingertip over the padlock’s torn edge.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ I said and stood up. ‘Things to do.’

‘Like what?’ She cocked one eyebrow. ‘Stay.’

I shrugged. ‘Get busy living.’

‘Wait…’ She opened the box. ‘What’s all this?’ She let out a low whistle. ‘That’s a lot of money. How…’

‘Think about it. She had to be putting a thousand bucks a week in that tin.’

Bree fished around inside and pulled out her mobile phone. She held up a fistful of wet notes. ‘What am I going to do with all this?’

‘Share it with the others. You’ll find a use for it.’

‘Here. Take some,’ she said. ‘You could start over.’

I shook my head. ‘It belongs to you guys. Anyway, new beginnings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.’

‘Where will you go? Will you be okay by yourself?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’ I stuck my chest out. ‘I am descended from kings,’ I joked.

‘Really?’ she said.

‘No. Not really.’

Bree closed the box. She shoved it towards me. ‘When they bring him back…I mean…here. You know what to do with it.’

‘You’re sure?’ I took the box.

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

‘I’ll come back soon,’ I promised.

‘I’ll be gone for a while, but give me your number. I’ll call you.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Cooktown,’ she said. ‘To stay with my auntie. They live the old way.’ She looked away, embarrassed. ‘Everything was so big out there, Friday. You know?’

‘I know,’ I said.

The following day, I walked barefoot through familiar streets, a newspaper jammed under my arm. I cut through an underground car park and came up in a quiet lane where seedpods burst under my feet. I worked my way through winding streets and alleys to the rows of old terraced houses, strung along like a paper-chain. And where the chain was broken by a patch of blackened earth, I stopped.

I ducked under the sagging tape fence and stepped around the debris. The section of interior wall was
still intact, lying flat, but the newspaper clippings were bleached by sun and rain. In the backyard, where the pond used to be, there was a dry well and a snake-shaped skeleton, its bones picked clean.

I opened the newspaper and slid out the pages. I spread the sheets out over the old clippings and pinned down each corner with pieces of wood.

There was a montage of pictures of Silence and me. If you clipped them into squares and flipped them front to back, they would have played like a miniature movie scene.

The pram rolled away.

Silence ran to the edge of the platform.

He jumped onto the tracks.

I dashed after him, I peered over the edge.

The pram came back up as if plucked by the hand of God.

While we fussed over the baby, Silence’s figure blurred like an apparition and disappeared between the stationary train and the far wall.

The headline said simply: THE BOY NOBODY SAW. The last frame was in colour, zoomed-in and blown up. You could see the blue of his eyes, his silver fringe that hung above them, his teeth that didn’t quite fit. The caption underneath read:
Lucas Emerson (Silence), our tragic hero.

In the photo, he was waving.

Two days after the newspaper story, four days before his funeral, Alison Dunne called to tell me that my friend had come home.

Silence’s body went unclaimed by his family. His sister Amy never showed.

I thought of his spirit, trapped in that train station forever, and it nearly broke me. I wanted him to have his memorial, something solid and glorious to say he’d been here, but when I turned up at the crematorium carrying a box full of money that stank like riverweed, I was too late.

A city of strangers had already claimed him.

On my last night in the city, a still, clear night just before dark, I went to the cemetery. Crickets went quiet where I stepped and started up again when I’d passed. A layer of mist hovered above the ground. Trees huddled and whispered.

I found Silence’s grave by heading towards the glow of scattered candles and the scent of citronella and hot wax. I’d missed the service—I didn’t think I could stand to hear the detached, pre-packaged spiel I’d sat through for Vivienne—and waited until well after, when everybody would be gone.

But they weren’t.

I sat alone, far away from the crowd on a grassy mound. Hidden by darkness, I watched.

Every funeral should be like his. Nobody was quiet
or reverent—instead, the sound of laughter and tears mingled together. People kept coming in a steady stream to place flowers on Silence’s grave. When it was covered, they put them on other graves. There were messages from children written in crayon, clippings from the newspaper, notes on pastel paper.