The Cry (23 page)

‘I’d like to ask for a short adjournment, Your Honour.’ Joanna’s lawyer has taken to his feet and donned a look of concern. I don’t think he’s asking for a break because his client is suffering up there, but because asking for a break adds to his whole mental-case case. ‘My client is clearly distressed and in need of a break.’

‘One thing I’m definitely not is too distressed to talk!’ Joanna yells.

The judge takes a long moment to examine Joanna – and seems to agree that she’s not very well: ‘The court is adjourned until 2 p.m.’

I can’t wait around till the afternoon. Chloe needs me. Anyway, it’s not doing me or anyone any good being here. It’s time for me to let go.

Joanna hasn’t been taken away from the courtroom yet. The old lady who spoke yesterday, Ms Amery, has walked up to the front and is talking to her, holding her hand. Joanna has a pleading look in her eye as she says something. I lip read – Joanna says thank you. She then hugs the old lady, who walks past me purposefully.

I have to get out of here. I have to move on. I want to see Chloe and Mum and Dad and Phil.

I want to stop feeling what I’ve started feeling: sorry for her.

I want to start enjoying what I’ve stopped feeling: rage.

I’ve just made it out into the real world when a female voice yells my name.

When she catches up with me she’s out of breath. ‘Alexandra,’ she says again, ‘I’m Kirsty McNicol, Joanna’s friend. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to talk to me, but I wondered if you might have time for a coffee?’

I look at my wrist to delay the making of a decision, remember I haven’t worn a watch for years, and say, ‘Sure.’

We sit in a booth in an old-fashioned Burke Street cafe, coffees before us. ‘Joanna asked me to give you something,’ she says, taking a package out of her bag. ‘I don’t know what it is but I said I would.’

I take it and stop myself from tearing it open. What on earth would she want to give me?

‘You have more reasons than anyone to hate her,’ Kirsty says, ‘but . . .’ She starts crying, grabs a napkin from the holder and carefully wipes leaking mascara from under her eyes. ‘Oh, nothing. You should hate her. She was an idiot.’

‘What were you going to say?’

‘She was so good before him!’ Her mascara can’t be fixed this time. It’s dripping from the thick eyelashes of this loyal friend. ‘I’ve known her since we were at nursery together. Such a smiler! We’ve been inseparable since then, except when she was sneaking around with him. And her mum – she was just the same. A kind soul. I know it’s hard to believe but she’s not who everyone thinks she is. She’s not evil. That fucking man . . . Just like her father. I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, it’s okay.’ I hand her another napkin. She really needs it.

‘I’m not just saying she was good, she really was. Before him, I don’t think she’d told a single lie. She was fun. Happy. I loved her so much.’ She smiles, wipes her eyes. ‘I’ll let you get home, eh. I really don’t know what’s in that package, but if you ever want to talk to me, here’s my card.’ As she withdraws her hand from the table, she knocks over a glass.

‘That’s me: bull in china, bur in linen,’ she says, putting the glass upright again.

‘Sorry?’

‘Oh nothing; it’s from a poem I like.’

That’s right, the one Phil’s always quoting. His ‘Ode to Al’. ‘That one about the klutz,’ I say.

‘No, no. It’s a poem about love. He adores her.’

She hands me the card, places a ten-dollar note on the table for the coffees, and holds her hand out to shake mine. Once she’s out of sight, I look at her card: Kirsty McNicol, Events Manager, and an address in Islington. I leave it on the table and head to the tram stop, her last words making me smile as I imagine Phil.

It’s a poem about love. He adores her.

Of course, I can’t wait till I get home to look in the package. I get a seat to myself on the Number 19 and I open it as the tram rattles through the city and into Carlton. Inside is a Bananas in Pyjamas teddy bear, a handwritten note and a printed letter.

The note reads:

The letter has been printed onto a single A4 sheet. I tell myself it’s absolutely necessary to read it before giving it to Chloe, just in case he’s said something that might upset her.

The letter oozes Alistair – the turn of phrase, the composition, the beautiful bullshit that used to make me fly with happiness. Even the fact that it’s typed – edited and re-edited till it’s perfect. But there’s something about it that doesn’t feel right. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but I’m uneasy.

I’m reading it again when Chloe arrives home from school.

‘How was the court?’ she asks. She’s been crying. She looks so sad. She
is
consumed and angry and lost. All I can think about is how Alistair’s letters made me feel in the early days: jubilant, wonderful. I wish I never found out that they were bullshit.

‘Honey,’ I say, ‘I have something for you. From your daddy.’

It was time to listen to Noah.

Joanna didn’t realise she’d recorded him until she arrived back in Glasgow. ‘Arrived’ is a pretty word for it – she was deported and placed in a facility for mad folk.
That
was her arrival. During her first week in the hospital she listened to Noah all day, every day. Listening was torture in the hospital, and they took Alistair’s phone away.

The counsellor wasn’t a total idiot, but Joanna didn’t think she needed to see her any more. She went because she had to go. She had to see her and she had to see a criminal justice social worker and she had to see a quack and she had to take the antidepressants.

Last visit, the counsellor announced that Joanna was ready to have the phone back. ‘But don’t listen to the recording,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be encouraging anguish. Or, if you must, limit how often. Dedicate a half an hour a day to private mourning and maybe listen just once then, but not all the time, not over and over like you did at Leverndale.’

‘I don’t feel anguish any more,’ Joanna said.

The counsellor didn’t believe her. ‘How’s that?’

‘Have you ever read
Anna Karenina
?’ Joanna asked her.

‘No.’

‘The theme is this: “You can’t build happiness on someone else’s pain”. ’

The counsellor nodded for more.

‘Alexandra and Phil were married a month ago. Chloe was bridesmaid. There are photos online.’

She nodded again.

Joanna smiled. ‘They’re happy!’

The counsellor was confused. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying I can build a life on that.’

Joanna planted two Lilly Pilly trees a while back. The first had grown to six feet, and was in the middle of her quaint stone-walled garden in Pollokshields, Glasgow.

Well, she hadn’t really planted the second. But she bought the block of land it now rests on, and asked Ms Amery if she’d plant it for her. Ms Amery didn’t ask why, she just did it.

It’s twelve feet tall now. The Australian sun, she supposed. She knew this because Phil’s Facebook profile was public. He’d posted two shots of the wedding at Healesville animal sanctuary a month ago, and one of the back garden in Point Lonsdale last week.

Phil’s Famous Sunday BBQ!
is written above the shot. Phil and Alexandra are laughing as he pours his wife some bubbly, the barbecue stacked with sausages and burgers beside them. Chloe’s lying on one of the deck chairs on the woodchip, a cute terrier snuggled on her tummy. The sky’s deep blue, and the tree Ms Amery planted is overhanging the back fence. It’s bursting with gorgeous pink berries.

Joanna had copied the image and zoomed in on the tree.

And there it was, on one of the branches: a bright red rosella with blue and yellow wings.

She decided to have her private mourning session from 5 a.m. till 5.30 a.m. That’d be around lunch time in Australia. It was summer in the UK, the sun would rise here around then.

She had eight mouthfuls of natural yogurt and did twenty minutes of yoga in the living room. She read seventeen pages of a book, more than she managed last time, which was good.

She checked the time: 4.53. The barbecue would be well alight now.

She placed a blanket on the earth underneath the Lilly Pilly tree. She plugged her earphones in, checked the time again.

The recording was a voicemail message from Joanna to Alistair. She wasn’t sure, but she figured the call was made a day or so before the trip. ‘Just ringing to check what time you’ll be home,’ Joanna said. ‘Gimme a call. Love you.’ But she hadn’t hung up properly, and after that there were two minutes of Noah. Crying.

As Joanna waited for the phone’s clock to reach 5:00 she recalled what one of the mothers at the breastfeeding group said: ‘He’s trying to communicate with his beautiful little voice. You just need to listen.’

She was nervous. When he was alive, it made her crazy. She thought he was so unhappy, judging her, yelling at her:
You’re doing everything wrong!
But she now believed the mother was right. He was just calling out to her.

She lay down on the ground and looked up at the dark green leaves.

She closed her eyes and focused:
Phil and Alexandra, laughing. Chloe on a chair on the woodchip, under the shade of the Lilly Pilly tree. The rosella.

She pressed Play.

I asked for so much help writing this and I got it in bunches. Thanks to Luca Veste, Sergio Casci, Isabel FitzGerald and Liz Hopkin for reading drafts and giving me excellent feedback. Huge shout to Pete and Vicki FitzGerald, Neil White, Doug Johnstone, Allan Guthrie and Felicity Pierce for practical advice on everything from criminal law to tampons and the price of coffee in Collins Street. Thanks to my agent, Phil Patterson at Marjacq Scripts, for his notes, diligence and good humour. And to Sarah Savitt at Faber who took this on when it was just an idea and worked like mad with me on it.

Mostly, thanks to my Dad, who lived in Point Lonsdale, where this book is set. He was the greatest story-teller and the funniest man I ever knew.

Helen FitzGerald is one of thirteen children and grew up in Victoria, Australia. She now lives in Glasgow with her husband and two children. Helen has worked as a social worker for over ten years. She has published three previous novels with Faber:
Dead Lovely
(2007),
My Last Confession
(2009) and
The Donor
(2011).

DEAD LOVELY

MY LAST CONFESSION

THE DONOR