Harum Scarum (9 page)

Monty stood in the shade of the entrance for a moment and watched Stevie run through the glare of parked cars. Tyres squealed as she left the car park and darted into the traffic.

Tash didn’t turn up for the team meeting, nor did she answer her phone. Stevie dropped by her place on her way home, but only Terry was home, and he hadn’t seen Tash all evening. Stevie then had to spend precious moments assuring Terry that if his sister had been involved in a car accident they would have heard by now. She asked him to get Tash to give her a call as soon as she got home.

The meeting at Central had gone longer than expected and the deviation to Tash’s place meant Stevie was later home than she’d planned. She was hoping this hadn’t caused Emma any problems—Izzy tended to play up when she was late to bed. Stevie let herself quietly into the house, interested to see how the babysitting session was going.

Emma sat on the couch with Izzy on her knee, slurping on an icy pole, rapt in a blanket of attention. Stevie tiptoed closer, wanting to hear but not wanting to break the spell.

Izzy interrupted the girl’s narration by thrusting the icy pole under her nose and offering her a lick.

‘No thanks, I have germ issues,’ Emma smiled. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

Izzy nodded and snuggled closer.

‘It was a magic, fairy-tale kind of a place,’ Emma continued, ‘part castle and part luxury villa, and it was built over a lake where a billion water lilies grew. It had towers and battlements and an inner courtyard with a pond and a statue of Peter Pan for a fountain. A high wall surrounded the courtyard, and the only way you could get into it was through one of those little doors like they have in the walls of prisons...’

‘Daddy says they’re for little prisoners,’ Izzy interrupted, her whisper whistling through her missing front teeth.

‘Then he must be right, Izzy. And because of all these barriers and the very small door with the very big lock, Katy Enigma knew that in this place she would always be safe from her enemies. If by some bad luck one of them was to get into the castle, she could escape by the secret passageway hidden behind the bookcase in her bedroom, or the other one that led from one of the kitchen cabinets and ran under the lake. If they came upon her outside in the courtyard, she could climb the one thousand steps to the highest tower, the one with the dome on top of it, and throw herself off to make her escape by running across the water lilies...’

‘And the baddies would try to follow and then be drownded,’ Izzy interrupted.

‘Drowned,’ Emma corrected. ‘That’s right, because they don’t have magic powers like Katy Enigma.’

‘Or her jet-propelled backpack,’ Izzy said.

Much as she was enjoying the story, Stevie could play the voyeur no longer. She cleared her throat.

Emma looked up and smiled, flashing Stevie a mouthful of coloured braces. ‘Oh, hello Mrs Hooper.’

Izzy jumped from her babysitter’s knee. ‘Mummy’s not Mrs Hooper! She’s not Mrs anything—silly!’

Emma reddened. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ but made a quick recovery. ‘We laid the table and made a salad. Izzy said she doesn’t like fish, so I gave her baked beans on toast, I hope that’s okay. I wasn’t sure how you wanted the soup cooked, so I’ve left that for you to do. Izzy’s had her bath and done her reading.’

Stevie was almost speechless. Mrs Carlyle hadn’t been wrong when she’d said this girl was a model of efficiency.

‘Thank you, Emma, you’ve done a terrific job.’ She smiled as she looked around the lounge room, at the cushions set straight upon the sofa, the hearth rug smoothed and the toys in the toy box—the place seemed to be tidier now than when she’d left it. She rummaged in her bag and handed Emma a twenty-dollar note. ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’

‘Thanks, but I’m okay. It’s only a short walk.’

‘I don’t think your parents would want you walking home so late—it’s nearly dark.’

‘They don’t care,’ the girl shrugged. ‘But do whatever you want, it’s cool.’

Stevie would have liked the opportunity to talk some more with Emma, but the short drive was monopolised by Izzy eager to hear the rest of the story. Apparently the waterlily lake was the home of a friendly dragon with eyes like ginormous stuffed olives and a tongue which, when unfurled, could stretch the length of their school oval.

Number 64 Riviera Place dwarfed its neighbours, taking up almost every available metre of the sloping riverside block. Stevie’s headlights lit up a white, double storied, flat roofed building, easily visible through an inadequate row of pencil pines. Look at me, look at me, the house seemed to cry, but upon closer inspection, there was little to see other than the even stripes of the front lawn and the dead eyes of huge reflective glass windows. Like looking at black ice, Stevie thought.

‘What do you think of it?’ Emma asked her.

‘Your house? It looks great.’

‘Liar,’ Emma said with a grin. ‘But it looks better than it did before. When it was grey it looked like Hitler’s bunker. I got them to paint it.’

Stevie smiled, but said nothing. Talking to someone about their house was like talking to someone about their children. They were allowed to be critical, but more fool you if you agreed.

Emma jumped from the car and ruffled Izzy’s head through the open back window. ‘I’ll tell you some more of the story when I come over next, but first we have to finish reading your schoolbook.’ She turned to Stevie. ‘You wouldn’t want her watching too much TV would you?’

Stevie shook her head vigorously, the model parent to a stern schoolteacher.
Shit
—how old was this girl again?

‘Same time tomorrow, Emma?’ she queried.

‘Sweet.’

The return to teenage vernacular was reassuring. The front porch light came on and Stevie saw a plump figure bathed in light. She unclipped her seat belt and made to leave the car. ‘If that’s your mother, I’d better come and introduce myself.’

Emma gave a slight start. ‘Um, no, that’s not Mum, that’s our housekeeper. Mum won’t be home yet.’

Stevie relaxed back into the car seat. ‘I’d like to meet her sometime.’

‘Sure, I’ll arrange it.’ Emma turned on her heel and ran towards the house, disappearing into the light before Stevie could get a firmer commitment.

Izzy was asleep in her car seat by the time they got home. ‘Emma, where have you been and whose car was that?’

‘Oh, hi, Mrs Bamford, great to see you too.’

The housekeeper shook her head and clucked her tongue. ‘Your mother never said anything about you going out after school. I’ve been worried.’

Emma kissed Mrs Bamford on her cheek and squeezed her floppy arm. ‘Mrs Carlyle wanted me to do some extra babysitting this week. I did tell Miranda, but you know what she’s like, she must have forgotten to pass on the message. The lady who dropped me off was one of Mrs Carlyle’s friends who called in for a visit when I was there. She lives nearby and offered to drive me home.’

‘I’ll go and heat up your tea in the microwave.’ Mrs Bamford headed toward the kitchen, her slippered feet yawing inwards as she negotiated the shiny sea of marble.

Emma stopped at the stairs, gripped the wrought iron balustrade with one hand and swung outwards, making her body star shaped. ‘I ate at Mrs Carlyle’s,’ she called out. ‘When are my parents getting back?’ The balustrade groaned.

‘Stop doing that dear, it’s becoming quite loose,’ the housekeeper chastised.

Emma continued to swing; Mrs Bamford would expect nothing less.

Mrs Bamford said, ‘Your mother’s at one of her cocktail parties and your Dad’s gone to his conference in Queensland.’

You mean, Emma thought, Miranda’s off with her boyfriend and Christopher’s looking for a big chunk of Queensland sand to bury his head in.

Her father used to play with her sometimes: she had vague memories of soccer on the oval when she could barely walk, let alone kick a ball. And there were the stories too, always the stories before bed. She tried to remember when they stopped and couldn’t; it must have been a long time ago.

‘You staying over?’ Emma asked.

‘Yes. Now you be a lovey and get on with your homework. There’s a new series of “Grey’s Anatomy”, I mustn’t miss the start.’ She rolled down to the TV room on thick stockinged legs which always made Emma think of the maid in Tom and Jerry.

The babysitter being baby sat, how stupid was that. Then again, not much made sense in this strange, dysfunctional family. Emma waited until she heard the music blast from the TV. Poor, dear, lovey Mrs Bamford, just as well you’re so deaf, so trustful.

Emma strode past the TV room where the shadows flickered beneath the closed door. In the kitchen she double clicked the deadbolt and stepped into the paved back courtyard. The garden pond shone like black ink, reflecting the splayed trumpets of day lilies, golliwog heads of agapanthus and spear-shaped irises. She’d chosen and planted the flowers around the pond herself after extensive research on the Internet for the most colourful and longest blossoming. The citrus hues of the day lilies crowded with the yellow daisies and pale native orchids, gradually merging with the blues and purples of iris and agapanthus. The gaps between the stone steps leading to the pond were carpeted with tiny blue-flowered bindweed and English violets.

A jet of water from Peter Pan’s pipe carved an arc of silver through his silhouette. Miranda didn’t know who the statue was supposed to be. She’d had some men dig the pond and put up the fountain chosen at random from the garden shop. ‘What a charming little boy,’ she’d said.

Peter Pan had been Emma’s best friend. When she felt sad or lonely she would come out here and talk to him. She imagined him teaching her how to fly and taking her off to Neverland where she’d help him fight the pirates and help Wendy to look after the lost boys.

The dream had faded as she’d grown up, but the pond was still one of her favourite places, rarely visited by anyone in the household except her and the gardener. She turned on the garden light, then the green pond light, and sat on the stone bench for a moment to watch the goldfish glide, tails swirling through the water like chiffon in a breeze.

A scuffing sound from the other side of the garden wall broke into her thoughts. She looked up from the pond to see two hands clasping the top of the wall as if someone was trying to heave himself up on it. Or herself, Emma automatically corrected. You should never assume anything. She stopped breathing, her eyes strained as she peered through the shadows. The top of a dark head appeared above the wall, then a young face. It was a boy, his face pale as the moon. One of ‘her’ kids, she wondered?
Squeaky?
If so, how had he managed to find her here?

Emma stood up. ‘Hi,’ she called.

The head disappeared. There was a thump and then the sound of running feet on the other side of the wall.

Emma ran to the wall and stood on the pot of a cumquat tree to see over. ‘Hey stop! It’s okay!
Squeaky, Howzat, Cheeky Charlie
—is that you?’ The figure didn’t turn back, continued running along the river’s edge until he rounded the bend.

Emma jumped down from the plant pot feeling vaguely disappointed. It was a silly idea; the boy couldn’t have been one of ‘hers’. Sometimes she wondered if it was a mistake, remaining so anonymous, maybe if she had been more open...

She shook her head to rid it of the crazy thought. He was probably nothing to do with her, just someone casing the joint, checking to see if there was anything in the garden worth pinching.

She returned to the pond. The palm tree groaned, an owl hooted. The reticulation from the front garden announced itself with a soft fizz. She had about twenty minutes to go before the sprinklers here would be activated. Kicking off her trainers, she removed her tracky pants and reached for Peter’s hand. He helped her into the pond and warm yoghurty sludge slid between her toes.

Careful not to slip, she felt her way down the statue’s body, holding onto his leg with one hand and lowering the other hand into the water. She groped around feeling for the jut of the underwater plinth and slid the metal box from its hiding spot. The slimy bodies of fish slithered against the bare skin of her legs and the blood-warm water tickled at the sleeve of her T-shirt. She glanced around, shivered. No face at the wall this time but there were still plenty of gaps in the wall for prying eyes.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was still being watched.

It was the same kind of cloud, Stevie mused, that floated in the sky when they’d been doing controlled scrub burns on the station. Nothing dramatic and billowing, just low slung and greasy, indicative of a gentle simmering heat from the ground below.

The cloud had started gathering at the team meeting. By the time Monty came home with it hanging above his head, Stevie could smell it, could almost see it. She soon realised this was not the time to tell him about the phone call she’d just received from a hysterical Mrs Kusak. He was angry enough with Tash as it was.

‘It’s totally unprofessional, that’s what it is,’ he grouched as he plonked his keys near the phone. ‘We needed her at that meeting. I make sure my team members keep their phones switched on day and night. You should too if you ever want to get beyond acting officer in charge. You have to set some kind of boundaries, discipline your people.’

Stevie sighed and returned to the pot bubbling on the stove. He’d bust a valve if she told him the rest of it now.

‘I called round at her place on my way home, but she wasn’t there. Her brother said she hadn’t called and he didn’t know when she was coming home. Her phone probably had a flat battery,’ she told him.

‘But you left a message?’

‘Yes Monty, I’ve told you that. Twice. And I told Terry to get her to ring me when she got home.’

Monty tore at his tie and flung it across a kitchen chair and stormed out of the room, his heavy tread making the jarrah floorboards lurch under her feet like the deck of a ship. She heard the banging of drawers, the slamming of the wardrobe door. Within seconds he was back.