Medea's Curse (25 page)

Beverley caught Natalie before she took Georgia in.

‘The Prosecutor’s office rang,’ she said.

Natalie wondered if Beverley and Carol hit it off. Maybe they swapped dentist details
or nail specialists. Beverley’s latest nails were impressive. ‘Very patriotic,’ Natalie
remarked, noting the green and gold.

‘What? Thanks. I said you were busy until Thursday and then in Sydney.’

‘Did they say what they wanted me for? Do I need to ring back?’ Had they found something
in the car Travis had borrowed from Rick?

‘Don’t know,’ said Beverley.

Natalie handed her Jessie’s computer. ‘When you get a chance can you back the files
up?’ Beverley started listing the things she had to do but Natalie was already collecting
Georgia from the waiting room.

Georgia looked like she wanted to be anywhere but where she was. Her clothes, all
black, seemed to have been chosen to fit her mood. She denied she was feeling anything
other than ‘fine’ when Natalie made the observation, but her statements were terse
until Natalie asked her to talk about Jonah.

‘Why? It’s just all the same stuff again and again,’ said Georgia. ‘I can’t see it’s
getting me anywhere or what it’s achieving.’ She gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘We waited
three years before getting pregnant again.’ Georgia was staring out the window as
she spoke. Natalie took notes.

‘It had been horrible. I can’t tell you how horrible. People saying how sorry they
were was almost as bad as when they didn’t know what to say. People saying how brave
we were to try again…We felt we’d had our bad luck.’

‘You were a nurse. Did you ever consider it might have been a genetic problem?’

‘Not really. I mean, the children all looked perfect. The pregnancy was difficult.
I was tired, I threw up a lot. Paul was very worried about me.’

Georgia was still looking out the window. ‘Jonah came a week early. He seemed fine,
though. A good feeder, better than the girls. Hungrier, at least.’

‘Did you breastfeed?’

‘I didn’t make enough milk. Jonah was a very unsettled baby. I wonder sometimes if
my being anxious through the pregnancy affected him somehow. That’s possible isn’t
it?’

Natalie nodded.

‘He was always hungry but he gulped, you know, then he’d get wind and throw up. We
took him to the GP and the paediatrician. We tried different formulas and medicines.
They said he’d grow out of it. Of course that never happened.’

‘What happened the night he died?’

‘Nothing,’ said Georgia. ‘He fed at eleven and then three in the morning, and I went
back to bed. Paul checked him at seven and couldn’t wake him.’

Natalie and Georgia looked at each other. Georgia’s coldness was back: a form of
self-protection or was it how she really felt about the loss of a third child? And
a boy that perhaps neither of them wanted? Was there any significance of it being
Paul who’d found the child?

‘What about the next pregnancy? Tell me about the knitting needles.’

Georgia turned her head slowly and stared. Natalie had to work hard at keeping her
expression neutral. ‘You read the papers.’

‘Yes.’

‘There were no knitting needles.’ Georgia crossed her arms.

Natalie made a note to ask her lawyer. Any inconsistency needed consideration: as
much as she didn’t want Wadhwa to be right, ensuring Georgia was properly diagnosed
and treated was more important than their point-scoring, as Declan had reminded her.

‘I got another card,’ Georgia said suddenly. She tossed it onto the desk.

‘Where’s the envelope? Did you recognise the writing?’

‘I threw it away. It was typed.’

Natalie picked up the card. On the surface it was less concerning than the last one.
One large rabbit and a smaller one: a scene from Peter Rabbit.

‘It’s him and Miranda,’ said Georgia in a voice barely more than a whisper. But Natalie
wasn’t paying much attention. Her focus was on the small hand-drawn logo on the back.
Had it been on the last one too? It looked just like the one Liam had sketched for
her on the napkin.

Amber, finally out on parole after two years, was booked to see her next. She needed
to tell Declan. He couldn’t blame her for Amber making the appointment but he would
insist Natalie not see her again. Given the connection Amber had with Tiphanie, this
did make sense. But it was hard to deny the strong sense of responsibility she felt
towards Amber. No one she referred her to would care as much.

When Natalie walked into the waiting room, Amber stood then hesitated. Natalie took
the initiative and stepped forward and hugged her. ‘You’re out.’

Amber nodded. She was crying. ‘It’s all so strange.’

In Natalie’s office Amber was no more settled. She
looked like she hadn’t been sleeping.

‘Tiphanie’s still in prison.’ Amber sat in the chair but moved almost immediately
to perch on the armrest.

‘She’s in hospital.’

‘She can’t leave,’ said Amber, dropping back into the chair. ‘I can’t bear this.
Isn’t there
anything
you can do?’

‘A lot is being done, Amber. She isn’t you.’

‘I could have stopped it if I’d told the truth.’

‘Talking about the threats wouldn’t have changed anything,’ said Natalie. Amber knew
as well as she did that the lawyers believed that bringing in the battered wife argument
would have undermined the infanticide defence.

‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ Amber didn’t look at her. Natalie was conscious of holding
her breath.

Amber whispered something that Natalie didn’t catch.

‘Sorry?’

‘It didn’t happen the way I said it did.’ Amber was looking directly at her.

‘All right.’ Natalie kept her voice low and even. ‘Tell me what did happen.’

Was Kay right after all? Amber had tried to tell her something in the prison, but
she’d been too high to hear, interrupting rather than listening. She was listening
now.

‘We’d been arguing. Like always. Bella-Kaye had kept us up the night before and she’d
been unsettled all day. I was tired and I was crying. He said things to me.’ She
sniffed, fishing in her bag for a tissue. ‘Like
you can’t do anything right, you
cow
, and
what sort of mother are you?
’

‘Did you respond?’

Amber shook her head. ‘I had dinner ready for him.’ Her voice was faint and flat.
‘Bella-Kaye started crying while I was finishing it off and I froze. I couldn’t settle
her or finish
dinner. I just stood there watching it sticking to the bottom of the
pan and Travis threw it over me.’ Tears had started to trickle down her cheeks. A
full minute passed before she continued. ‘I was just standing there covered in potato.
Carrots in my hair. It had splashed on my face and it burned me, but I don’t remember
feeling anything.’

Natalie remembered her face on the police video and how flushed Amber had looked.
Not flushed; scalded. In the version of the story that had gone to court, Travis
hadn’t been there, had yet to arrive home from work.

‘Travis was laughing. He said how stupid I looked. He told me I had better clean
myself up, said I looked pathetic.’

Amber grasped the edge of the chair tightly. ‘I
was
pathetic. I can’t believe—’

‘Amber,’ said Natalie, ‘you had put up with months of abuse; he’d made you believe
it. You were acting how he was telling you to.’ No worse than the psychology students
in those prisoner and guard experiments. In Amber’s case there had been a long lead-up,
a concerted campaign on Travis’s part, to belittle her. Not many people could withstand
a constant barrage of being told they were worthless and not start to believe it.

‘I went to the bathroom, like a robot,’ Amber continued. ‘I had run a bath for Bella-Kaye
but I had forgotten about it and the water had gone cold. She started screaming,
you know, in her bassinet. I think she was hungry, but Travis yelling scared her.
Her eyes used to go wide and…and her bottom lip would tremble.’ Amber looked up at
Natalie through her tears. ‘She was only six weeks old.’

Natalie kept her hand on Amber’s. They were both there, one reliving it and the other
picturing it so clearly that she had to swallow to stop bile filling her mouth.

‘He started yelling even louder, calling Bella-Kaye… a…a…cunt just like me. I, I
didn’t know what to do. So I…I went out to get her and I thought I could give her
a bath. I mean, I was washing myself, and I guess I knew baths soothed her and she
hadn’t had one.’

Amber’s body was racked with her sobs. She had never told the full story, even to
her family. Even through the therapy with Natalie, her shame—the deeper belief that
she was everything Travis had called her—had made her hold this back.

‘He followed me. He was still yelling and Bella-Kaye was screaming and I…I just couldn’t
think straight. I put her in the bath. She…she even had her clothes still on. It
was cold by then so of course she cried even more. Then…then…’

Natalie waited, not wanting to hear but knowing she had to. Had to allow Amber to
tell the truth so she could get on with her life. Not guilt-free. But perhaps, eventually,
she could forgive herself.

‘Travis yanked me back and wouldn’t let go,’ said Amber, now a whisper again. ‘He…oh
my God, he laughed. I can still hear him laughing.’ She shivered. ‘I saw Bella-Kaye
disappear under the water and the look of surprise on her face, but she…she was quiet
and it seemed, seemed…easier.’

‘He was holding you.’

‘Yes.’ Amber bit her lip. ‘But he wasn’t holding me that hard.’

Natalie put her arm around Amber, fighting her repugnance, knowing that what Amber
said was the truth but that there had been no malice in her action—or rather inaction.
It had been a desperate and hopeless acquiescence to the peace she’d craved. Respite
from the confusion, the fatigue; the overwhelming inability to think rationally.
But
by giving in, she had failed to save her much-loved and wanted child.

‘It’s why I didn’t ask for bail,’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘Travis did
it but I let him, I didn’t fight him. He had said one of us needed to die and I let
it be her and it should have been me. He wanted to kill me too; after she was dead
he said it was my fault and I had to do exactly what he said, how he didn’t deserve
to have such a useless wife who couldn’t even protect her own child. So instead of
dying, I’m living in hell.’

It all finally made sense. By the time of the plea Amber had wanted to leave prison.
Natalie had thought it was the reality of prison life setting in, but she had also
broken up with Travis, and had gained some insight into how he had manipulated her.
Natalie broke the silence.

‘Amber, you need to tell this to the police.’

Amber looked up. ‘No.’

‘You can talk to your lawyer first,’ said Natalie. ‘You’ve already been convicted
so it won’t affect your charges in any negative way. You need to do this for Tiphanie.’

‘I can’t go through it again, I just can’t. I don’t want to ever see Travis again.’
The diffidence had vanished. ‘I’ve already killed my father; it would be the last
straw for Mum.’

‘I don’t think she’d be…surprised to find Travis did it.’ Had Travis really confessed
to Amber’s father or to someone Kay didn’t want to implicate? Or had Kay simply guessed?

‘It doesn’t matter. She had to sell part of the farm to pay for my lawyer. We can’t
afford to do it again. You can’t make me, and you can’t tell anyone what I’ve said.’

Amber was right. But if Damian and Liam knew, they could use the information to help
Tiphanie.

‘Tiphanie will get out anyway won’t she?’ Amber asked.

‘What if she doesn’t?’ Natalie pushed her harder, for Tiphanie’s sake. Damian and
Liam were both slower than she would like. And there was the neighbours’ testimony
to complicate matters, information she couldn’t share with Amber.

‘I can’t,’ Amber repeated, starting to shake. ‘You promise, don’t you?’

Amber was her patient too. If she had come clean earlier, things could have been
so different. Had she closed Amber down too soon? Been too ready to let her accept
the blame?

Natalie knew that the confession had taken strength. It would take more to face a
charge of perjury or, perhaps worse, face her mother, brother and friends and help
them make sense of what had really happened. Amber and her family had already been
through hell. If Amber told the truth now it would be all rehashed; she’d be back
in the papers. The police or courts might well not believe her.

‘I promise,’ said Natalie.

‘Senior Constable Hudson here. Tony.’

‘News?’

‘Possibly.’ Senior Constable Hudson’s tone didn’t fill Natalie with hope her stalker
had been charged and locked away. But ringing this early in the morning meant something.

‘Are you going into your rooms today?’

‘No.’ She had finished there for the week.

‘I’d like you to.’

‘Care to expand on that?’

‘There was a break-in. I want to know if they were after you.’