Henry Hoey Hobson (15 page)

My stomach plummeted as the empty lift descended.

I thought I was going to be sick and jabbed convulsively at the Ground Floor button just as a ding announced the next stop.

The doors slid open and a throng of people entered, the stench of sweat and cigarettes descending like a bag over my head. It wasn't my floor, but I had to get out of there.

I put my head down and pushed past them, scooting down the first corridor I saw. It led to a T-junction where I hung a left for no logical reason. Within minutes I was hopelessly lost.

I didn't even know what floor I was on, let alone in which direction I should head. All I knew was that no-one could find me if I couldn't find myself. I fished out my mobile and switched it off before they tried to ring me. I couldn't talk to them. I couldn't even bear to think about them.

The endless corridors and interlinking walkways between buildings eventually spat me out on Herston Road, a whole city block from where we had entered the hospital.

I crossed to the bus station just as the 333 pulled in. I still had Mum's wallet in the velcro pocket of my shorts, so I pulled out a five-dollar note and offered it to the bus driver.

‘Going to Chermside?' she asked.

I nodded but the truth was I didn't know where I was going. My internal compass had gone haywire, the needle swinging dizzily at all points, bar one.

Home was the one place that I couldn't go: it was the first place that they would look for me. I swung into the nearest seat, training my eyes on the window; searching the traffic whizzing by for a distraction from the jangle of thoughts clattering about in the hot, enclosed space of my head.

Anders had accused Mum of uprooting me every time he'd gotten close ... Did that mean he had been looking for me? That all those moves were to keep me away from him?

It was as though the image that I had of my life was just one side of a spoon, the side my mother had let me see. Now Anders had shown up and flipped the spoon over, upending my life, and sending everything I believed to be true tumbling on its head.

Chermside Shopping Centre was surprisingly busy for a school day.

For some reason I expected empty aisles, with the occasional retiree venturing out for a cup of tea or a new hat for bowls. Instead the place seethed with shoppers, all ages, even my age, which made me wonder how many of us there were on the run.

The food court stank of chips and muffins. My stomach flipped over and I hurried out into a fluorescent blur of shops, the push of trolleys and prams, the crush of people, lights, spruikers and musak. It made it hard to think, and that suited me fine.

I blundered into Myer and took the escalator up to their electronics floor, where I found row upon row of liquid plasma screens playing
Madagascar 2.
I sat on the floor in front of a massive two-metre screen, wanting to lose myself in the antics of King Julien, but not even liquid plasma could sustain lemur humour for long with the sound fully muted.

I drifted back out to EB Games and flicked through the discount racks, just for something to do. The store seriously needed to adopt Harvey Norman's
try before you buy
policy. The last time I'd been there with Mum, I'd played
Guitar Hero
for half an hour before anyone had told me to get off. And even then, it had been a kid wanting a go, not a sales assistant. The memory – the thought of my mother – sent me scurrying out of the shop, searching for another distraction.

I found it in the blaring jangle of conflicting noises at Replay, the games arcade on the cinema level, next to the tenpin bowling alley. I put ten dollars on a games card and drove all conscious thought out of my head, screeching round hairpin corners, hammering heads popping up out of holes and slapping into some old-fashioned pinball.

I snapped out of the games-induced trance when I swiped the card one time too many. I'd blown my dough. The knot in my gut tightened to snapping point.

I had just wasted the equivalent of two hours' work, pounding the pavement and slotting leaflets into letterboxes. The realisation, coupled with the smell of popcorn from the cinema, made me want to vomit.

I escaped down the escalator and roamed aisle after aisle until finally I found the open air. Acres of car parks and beyond that fields of green, a hockey ground and–

A memory tugged at me. I had been here before. The breeze shifted, bringing with it a familiar scent that glistened like a strand of hope in the muddy depths of my day. It reeled me in, up from the mire of confusion and panic.

For the first time in hours, I knew where I needed to go.

I slid another five-dollar note across the counter, trying not to think about how much money I'd blown in less than half a day. How many flyers I'd have to deliver to make it all back.

The woman behind the counter eyed me for a moment, then pushed some change towards me.

‘You forget your towel?' she asked.

I froze. ‘I forgot my togs too,' I said. ‘Do you have any here that I can borrow?'

‘Check the lost property box,' she said, reaching for the phone. ‘It's on the bench outside the boys' change rooms.'

I emerged a few minutes later in a pair of Speedos in better nick than the ones I had at home. I'd found a better pair of goggles too and made a mental note to ask the lady on the desk if I could have them when I left.

The sun burned down on my bare shoulders. Lost Property had no sunblock, so I probably had fifteen minutes, maximum, before I started to burn. I figured I'd better make the most of it, and hurled myself into the water for a mind-numbing kilometre of freestyle.

Twenty laps later I pulled myself out and into the shade.

My breath was coming hard and fast, but I felt better, more in control, so it didn't freak me out when Anders appeared at my side with a towel and a bottle of water.

He waited, without speaking, while I dried myself off, and when he handed me the water, I downed half the bottle.

‘How did you find me?'

He stared out across the glistening lanes. ‘Weren't too many places you could go. Manny was keeping an eye out for you at home. You weren't at the local pool, so I phoned every other public pool in the book. The lady here called me back fifteen minutes ago.'

‘Does Mum know?'

He nodded and handed me an iPhone every bit as wicked as the one Caleb had offered me the first time we met.

‘Give her a call.'

I stood up. ‘You give her a call. I have to practise my butterfly.'

I dived in before he could argue.

I didn't want to talk to my mother. I didn't want to hear how worried she'd been, how sorry she was, how she wanted me to come back to the hospital. I didn't want to talk to her at all.

I burst out of the water, hurling my arms up and over, then diving back under for a powerful dolphin kick. Out and up. Over and under. Butterfly was all technique. Power and rhythm. Breathing every second stroke. Driving all thought from my mind.

When I got out, Anders passed me the towel for the second time. I took it and grabbed my clothes. ‘I have to change. These togs came out of Lost Property.'

‘The lady at the gate said you can keep them; they've been in the box for weeks. The goggles too.' He held his mobile out to me.

‘Haven't you phoned her yet?' I asked.

‘I have,' he said. ‘But I'm not the one who's been missing for three hours.'

‘No,' I said heavily. ‘You're the one who's been missing for twelve years.'

He opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he moved closer and wrapped my unwilling hand around the iPhone.

‘Call your mother,' he said softly and turned to walk away.

‘Why should I?'

He stopped and looked back, his eyes dark with regret.

‘Because she was the one who was there for you for the last twelve years.'

‘Honey, I'm so sorry. I've been out of my mind since you ran out of here–'

Anders stood near the canteen, far enough away to give me privacy, close enough to stop me from doing a runner if the mood took me. He looked young in his jeans and T-shirt, though he had to be thirty, the same age as my mum.

I didn't know what to say to her. She kept saying she was sorry, but I couldn't say
That's OK
because it wasn't.

So I didn't say anything.

‘Honey-bun – are you still there?'

Finally, a question I could answer. ‘Yeah, Mum. I'm here.'

‘I'm sorry–' She'd just said it again. ‘You shouldn't have had to find out that way–'

Find out what? That I had a father? She'd already told me that much:
Andy Neilson, waste of space, we're better off without him.
But she hadn't told me the rest.

That he'd been looking for me ... And that she'd kept me away by packing up and moving every time he got close...

‘Come back into the hospital, honey-bun, and we'll talk–'

‘I've got swim training,' I lied. ‘I'm meeting someone to go over some drills to get ready for the carnival.'

Maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe Hero would turn up.

The silence on the line roared in my ears. Then her voice, catching, as she forced the words out.

‘You were all I had, honey-bun. All that I had ever had. You were so perfect that I couldn't be lieve you were mine. I couldn't bear to let anyone, not even Andy, take you away from me.'

Tears trickled down the line, and I didn't know whether to feel glad or ashamed that I'd managed to hurt her.

‘I'll see you tomorrow,' I said finally, the tightness in my chest choking off the chance to say anything more.

‘OK,' she whispered. ‘Tomorrow. We'll talk then.'

I handed the phone back to Anders and walked past him out into the shimmering heat of the car park.

It was another silent trip home.

He pulled up in front of the hydrangeas, turned off the engine and waited for the questions that he must have seen coming.

‘Why does Mum hate you so much?'

He turned and looked right into my eyes. ‘I let her down.' He exhaled a long audible breath. ‘And she never forgave me.'

I waited, knowing that there was more, and suspecting that it wasn't going to be anything that I wanted to hear.

‘She asked me, straight out, if I wanted you–'

‘And you didn't,' I said flatly. It was what I expected, but that didn't stop the pain that knifed down, deep in my guts.

‘I was seventeen, I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know anything.'

He shook his head, as though trying to clear it. ‘My dad was pushing me to go to med school. Kept saying a career was the best way to help Lydia. But Lydie wanted us to run away, to get away from that God-awful family of hers. Said she'd wait tables while I painted–'

‘Which is exactly what ended up happening.' I folded my arms across my chest and sank down in the car seat. ‘You got what you wanted, and she got to work in dead-end jobs for the rest of her life.'

‘No–' His lips compressed into a tight line. ‘I went to med school and spent six years studying all week and working weekends at Rosie's Bar in the city to pay my rent.'

That made me sit up. ‘You're a doctor?'

He shook his head. ‘Being a doctor is all about talking to people. Finding out their story, listening to their problems, figuring out what's wrong. All day, talking, talking, talking...'

His voice trailed off. We both knew how good he was at that.

‘I didn't pick up a paintbrush again until after my final exams. I was twenty-four years old. It took me two years to get together enough paintings for my first exhibition.'

His hands clenched on the steering wheel. ‘Lydia wouldn't take my calls. Returned all my letters, unopened. Every time I tracked her down she'd disappear, taking you with her.'

‘Are you trying to say that she was the one in the wrong?'

‘God, no.' His lips worked with the effort to get the words out. ‘But she wouldn't let me explain ... so she never knew ... that I'd finally figured out that she was right.'

‘About what? That you should have been an artist all along?'

‘No–' His voice was husky; his eyes, a naked gaslight blue. ‘That I should have stuck around, so I could get to know you.'

A tap on the window made both of us jump.

It was Hero, lips clamped solemnly around his teeth.

He stepped back as I pushed the door open, jostling a short, dark-haired woman standing on the footpath. They both held something swathed in tea towels. Something that smelled so good it had reeled Manny out of the house and onto the footpath.

‘Hi, Henry.' Hero was unusually subdued. ‘Sorry about your mum.' He handed me the wrapped casserole dish. ‘My mum made you this, for tonight–' he grabbed the other one out of her hands, ‘–and this for tomorrow night.'

He handed the second meal to Manny who sniffed at it appreciatively. ‘Ah, saffron ... more valuable, weight for weight, than pure gold. My compliments to the chef.'

Mrs Marquez dimpled a smile at him, making him blush.

I cradled the other dish to my chest. It was warm, like the inside of my eyelids. ‘Yes, thanks, Mrs Marquez. This is really nice of you.'

She smiled and patted my cheek. Her teeth were really beautiful – evenly spaced and white – so there was hope for Hero yet.

‘I am baking this weekend. We will bring more food on Saturday,' she said.

Hero nudged me. ‘Want to come swimming? We can give you a lift.' He pointed at the old green Commodore parked across the street. Hero's granddad hung an arm out the open window and waved.

‘
Hola,
Henry.'

I twiddled a couple of fingers that I didn't need to hold onto the casserole.

‘
Hola,
Mr Marquez.'

Hero leaned up against the car, trying to keep his voice casual. ‘You know, Burke hasn't won a swimming carnival since I was in Grade One. You're kind of our big hope. You're not going to miss the carnival, are you, Henry? You know, because of your mum...'

I couldn't bring myself to tell him that I wasn't going back to Perpetual Suckers. Ever. But I couldn't lie to him outright either.

‘Look, I don't know if I'll be able to make the carnival, Hero. I'm not sure when Mum's coming out of hospital ... I should probably be here, you know, for her.'

He took it on the chin, tucking in his lips and nodding, trying not to show his disappointment. ‘I understand,
amigo.
Family first, right?'

He tried to smile.

I looked down at the food clutched to my chest, then at Manny, working a corner of the tea towel free to sneak a peek at the contents.

‘But ... I guess I could go with you now, if you want,' I found myself saying. ‘Give you a bit of a hand with your dives. See if we can't get you off the blocks a bit quicker in time for the carnival.'

The light leapt back into his eyes and I was glad I'd made the effort to think of someone other than myself.

Anders pulled the dish out of my hands and slung the towel he'd brought to Chermside over my shoulder. ‘You still have those Lost Property togs and goggles?'

I nodded.

‘See you tonight then,' he said.

I didn't want to make him any promises, so I nodded at Manny and ran across the road with Hero. Relieved to be doing something that I could handle for a change.